Dimensional Transfer
by jseah
Summary: An ISOT-like story. The 1st Tower of Ar Tonelico appears in the middle of the Atlantic ocean during Harry's 1st year. Muggles, wizards and Ar Cielans struggle to understand each other and chart an uncertain future towards peace. Interests collide, evil arises, each must find ground to cooperate or conflict may follow.
1. Chapter 1 - Ar Tonelico

_A/N: A random idea I had._

 _If continued, this story is planned to focus on how the three societies adjust to each other. Ar Tonelico, the wizards and the muggles. In many ways, I wanted to avoid having the leaders be stupid but Harry Potter is full of incompetent leaders._

 _Updates only sporadically._

 _EDIT: A calculation of horizon visibility puts the horizon at the top of a 110km tall Tower at ~1200km. So the Tower of Ar Tonelico is not visible from any of the continents. I have retconned the observation from the random muggle businessman to account for this. The initial transition had a much taller beam of light so that was visible over a good portion of Earth._

 _Notes of interest / background info at the end of the chapter_

* * *

"Orgel of Origins collapse mode set. "

 _EXEC_DILINK_INITIALIZE_

 _Symphonic Linker new module registered. Symphonic Linker operational. Orgel power feed shutting down. Tower Service Infrastructure System suspended. Warning, Parameno Discs deactivation failure. Administrator Override acknowledged. Dimensional Field expansion... resonance... locked. Dimensionality Eight achieved._

The voice of the security protocol, Mei Mei, echoed through the SPU and most of the tower's internal zones. Only the staff for this operation were around to hear it however, the tension in the room was thick enough to cut. The Parameno Discs that mediated Song Magic for the Reyvateils had been jury rigged into the new Symphonic Linker that took over the Tower's power supply, similar to the method used for Infel Phira. A failure by the automated suspend program had been expected so no one commented.

"All Tower Systems ready! "

"The cities have undergone full lock down. The citizens will remain in secure areas until the state of emergency has passed. "

"Ready for dimensional transfer. "

Shurelia nodded as the reports each came in to the SPU. The plan was ready, everyone was in position. It was time to leave this dying world in one last desparate gamble.

"Frelia?"

"Yes, sister?"

She looked at her sister in all but name, the Reyvateil Origin who no longer had a Tower to Administrate.

Together, they would lead what was left of this world to another.

Together, they would Sing.

For the third who was no longer with them.

And for everyone else still alive.

 _EXEC_DILINK_

 _Dimensional resonance amplifying. Dividing Wall established. Musical Corridor shutdown. Grathnode Discs power supply disconnected. Warning Parameno Discs deactivation failure. Quantizer shutdown. Silver Horn shutdown. Beginning Dimensional Transfer._

She could cry once the people were safe again.

* * *

The field around the Tower was a curtain of coruscating energy, a shell that reached from the very top of the Rinkernator all the way down to the foundation of the Tower in the inland sea below the Sea of Death.

With a frenetic chiming, the Orgel's tune was heard once more after centuries of concealment beneath the toxic grey clouds. In their bubble of reality, the sea had dissipated once the bubble had cut off from Ar Ciel.

Then with a blast of external power from the collapsing planet behind them, the entire bubble was hurled beyond space and time.

* * *

With a blast of symphonic power and a climatic end to the Song, the curtain of energy vanished.

The view outside the windows in the command center at the SPU was a vast blue expanse below them. Further towards the curved horizon was strips of brown to the east and west, with the northern ice cap visible as a thin line of white in the far distance. No plasma fields were there to block their view from the SPU. There was no Blastline, no Sea of Death, it really was another world!

 _Dimensional Transfer Com- Warning, Tower stability compromised. Warning, Orgel power supply at 0%, connection lost._

Right as Shurelia registered that they had landed in the middle of an ocean, the floor shook.

"Tower tilt at 0.5 degrees! Emergency stabilization!"

 _Warning, Plasma Bell emergency discharge imminent. Upper Section stability thrusters activated._

"The base of the tower is in the middle of the ocean! Transfer did not place us at the bottom! Landing in 3!"

Shurelia shook against the safety straps of her chair as the SPU shook violently, one hand grasping Frelia's across the gap between their arm rests. She could feel the shockwaves travelling through the Tower as it underwent a sudden elevation change. She could feel the automatic systems fighting to keep the Tower upright.

The Tower was part of her after all.

With a loud roar, the Tower foundations settled onto the sea bed, sending shockwaves racing outwards on the ocean's surface.

 _Warning, Tower integrity compromised in Lower Section._

Shouts and warnings began to fill the air in the SPU while Shurelia closed her eyes to better concentrate on the Tower's systems. The Plasma Bell was trying to both correct the tilt of the Tower while still compensating for the sudden height correction of the Wings of Horus, and suffering overload warnings. The Upper Section of the Tower had thrusters that needed adjustment, both to follow the tilt of the Tower as well as avoid sliding out of alignment with the Frozen Eye and the Middle Section. Some parts of the foundation that had received the greatest shock were receiving integrity warnings.

Long minutes passed as her mind raced around the Tower, fighting the problems that had cropped up everywhere at once. All throughout the Tower, Tenba, Elemia and Platina personnel fought with her, along with the emergency power sent from Metafalica and the Wings of Horus where the Reyvateils had started their chorus.

In a feat of cooperation so rarely seen on their war torn world, all the peoples fought together to keep the Tower standing, to stay alive.

* * *

 _Tower stability restored. Plasma Bell integrity warning, output at 64%. Upper Tower stability thrusters deactivated. Lower Section integrity warning, structural stress at 20% of safe limits. Warning, Orgel power supply at 0%, connection lost. 315 critical warnings remain, 11 561 non-critical warnings remain._

Shurelia opened her eyes and wiped away the sweat running down her forehead. That half an hour of ensuring the Tower did not collapse was not the hardest thing she had ever done, but it was close.

The Wings of Horus had lost significant altitude, now resting some distance below the Plasma Bell instead of above it. The outlying detached islands had been dropped. But the main continent was still flying. The Plasma Bell had suffered further damage, they were lucky the shock had only reduced output by as little as it had. The Tower foundations needed to be checked for serious problems, however unlikely that was. The damage was great, but they had survived.

"Reboot Tower Infrastructure Systems," she commanded.

 _EXEC_RE=NATION_

 _Basic Infrastructure System reboot. Warning, Orgel power supply at 0%, connection lost. Plasma Bell online, integrity warning, output at 64%. Musical Corridor online, integrity warning, output at 85%. Grathnode Discs power supply connected, warning verification error, no feedback received. Service Infrastructure System reboot. Parameno Discs activation, warning Parameno Discs already activated. Quantizer online. Silver Horn online. Observatory online. Collision warning!_

"Incoming orbital impactor to Observatory! Sol Marta meteor defence firing!"

A flash from above as a coruscating beam of light, pencil thin at its minimum power level, shot off into the distance. There was no feedback from the target of course, the distance was too great to see with the naked eye.

"Observatory reports orbital debris destroyed. "

Leard shot off an order, "start an analysis of the orbitals. That object's orbital path was circular. And someone tell Tenba to send an airship to pick up the debris. "

"Sir! Tenba is saying they're detecting lower order harmonics in the atmosphere! It's not Symphonic Power but has complex bands and patterns! They're beginning analysis now but they think it's artificial!"

The command center went silent.

This planet already had intelligent life on it.

"The shockwave!" Shurelia would have shot out of her seat if she wasn't still strapped in. The shockwave travelling through the ocean from their impact would flood all the coastlines when it reached them! "We have to stop it!"

Leard turned to her, "how? We don't have enough power to push the Plasma Bell's field out far enough. The wave is... seventy thousand stons away by now according to the Musical Corridor sensors. "

"We can tune Tower Connection to remove heat! Freeze a barrier to stop the wave!"

He just looked at her, "certainly the Tower broadcast range will reach that distance but we don't have enough symphonic power to use Tower Connection. "

"Then I'll ask for the power! A large enough chorus will be able to boost the available power temporarily. " Shurelia might have later explained that she felt that greeting the natives with a massive tsunami was not the best of introductions but at the time, all she had wanted to do was save lives.

He gestured behind his back at Sasha sitting at her station who immediately started typing away. The genius inventor spoke up a few seconds later, "you need maybe 29% of all the reyvateils. 35% to be safe. "

Shurelia glared at Leard, Frelia beside her, who merely matched the gazes of the two Administrators calmly before nodding. "Do it," he said and a flurry of messages went out from the communication stations to all parts of the Tower where the people were still sheltering.

The combined chorus, just starting to relax from the exhausting dimensional transfer and stabilization of the Tower, was suddenly asked to continue singing again. Complaints and confusion arose but gradually, the reyvateils took up the song again.

It took agonizing minutes of waiting, but eventually, Shurelia could feel the power building up in the grathnode discs as the Tower wide chorus began.

* * *

The shattered Grathnode Discs might be unresponsive to Tower commands, but they still served as symphonic power projection devices despite their damage. Now, without a Blastline to shade it, the glow of a Tower Connection shone with the roar of a hundred thousand voices. A rising star visible from a good quarter of the planet.

A beam of power, dwarfing the anti-meteoroid defence of Sol Marta. Piercing through the cloud of Grathnode Disc fragments, the beam swept around in a circle 300 kilometers across. Everywhere it touched, ocean water flashed into ice, the slanted barrier of jagged ice stretching from the surface down to the seafloor. Then before the wave could reach it, the beam swept out again, freezing a second barrier behind the first, trapping the shockwave between them.

Many minutes later, the massive shockwave hit the outer circle and shattered it. Ice crumbled and broke apart into massive icebergs that were swept outwards by the wave's power. However, the force of the tsunami was broken and reflected. The rebound hit the inner circle and the same shattering happened, only less furious. The floating ice churned in the fury of the ocean and was not impressed. Spent and broken, the massive wave subsidized into a less dangerous series of smaller rebounds.

Back in the Tower SPU, Shurelia collapsed with relief.

The people were safe. They could start much needed repairs to the Tower and deal with the world. Later.

"Administrator, unauthorized hacking attempt detected at Dividing Gate B Zero. "

Oh what now...

* * *

"Oi! There's a light?"

"What the hell is that?!"

"Oh my god, did it just shoot a beam?"

"Aliens?!"

The strange pillar of light that appeared in the early afternoon was all anyone could talk about. High in the sky, in the general direction of southwest, the light was visible from his London office window. The light must be visible across all of the British isles and most of Europe. The manager sighed to himself, there would be no salvaging this meeting. Not that he had high hopes for cooperation from the oil companies anyway.

When the diffuse glare died down, the sky went back to looking just like it always had been.

What in the world could that be? That was probably the foremost question on everyone's minds.

Very little work got done for the rest of the day, both in the company and everywhere across London and probably the world. The radio and TV were doing emergency broadcasts, telling the people not to panic and that the government would handle it.

Hours later, just before dinner time in London, the first special news was beginning to go out across the world.

Yes, it was aliens. There was now what looked like a tower that was over a hundred kilometers tall, all the way to low orbit, situated in the middle of the Atlantic at the equator. On arrival, the aliens had apparently shot down a weather satellite that was too close to their tower and then "claimed" a 300 kilometer radius of ocean around their tower by freezing the perimeter. The resulting ice floes in the equator was disrupting ship traffic between South America and Europe, one ship had already sunk from collision with an iceberg where icebergs were never expected.

That tower also somehow output massive energy in radio and microwaves at all frequencies, energy that was akin to the power consumption of a large human city. The radio static across the entire planet had increased significantly and radio communications and radar were disrupted in a huge spot close to five hundred kilometers in radius. It was suspected that close to the tower, the radio energy would be so great that electronic equipment not hardened against EMP attack would simply fail.

Naval and air taskforces from NATO were scrambling to investigate. Russian and Chinese forces were a little too far away, but Russia had dispatched a few ships anyway. No one knew what the aliens were, or what they wanted. There was speculation that the nuclear arsenals might be employed if the aliens proved to be hostile.

However, the one thing that stuck in everyone's mind was the final picture the weather satellite had sent.

There was a flying landmass close to the tower. One the size of a small country. Just hovering in the air around ten kilometers from the sea surface. As if gravity was an afterthought.

And if the aliens could float a piece of land the size of a country and freeze oceans at a whim, just what else could they do?

* * *

The International Confederation of Wizards was in emergency session.

A few hours prior to the arrival of the Tower, magical sensors all across the world had started going haywire. Even devices that were normally only local detectors were picking up spurious signals and the more magically sensitive animals were agitated and hard to control. Many potential breaches to the Statute of Secrecy had resulted, quite a few were severe, and the magical interference was only increasing. The only saving grace was that the muggles were completely oblivious to this.

The disturbance was quickly resolved to a particular spot in the middle of the Atlantic, but the only thing the best cursebreakers had been able to tell was that something was trying to travel to that spot. Something big. Huge. Enormous. Titanic.

One of them had been quoted in the report, "You normally can't tell a portkey is being used from the destination. But imagine someone turning Britain into a massive portkey. That's how big it is. It's impossible to miss. "

The poor man had no idea his words would be immortalized in history and newspapers afterwards.

It wasn't that simple of course, the portkey zone was far too huge, hundreds of kilometers across. And the magical traces were baffling, containing patterns and pulses that made everyone who examined it think of songs. Only everyone disagreed on what the song was. Whatever the spell was, was inefficient but also genius in its construction. Just the examination of some of the arithmancy was enough to make academic careers.

After the build up was suspected of becoming too great to allow Apparition, everyone had been removed from the area.

At precisely 2 hours, 22 minutes and 22 seconds past GMT noon, the magical interference had built into an overwhelming crescendo that had magical governments shutting down their accidental magic detection networks due to the flood of false alarms rendering them useless. Several poorly designed wards overloaded or fired their defenses mistakenly. The Tower arrived.

And not just arrived, but also arrived in an unmistakably magical fashion. The Tower's very existence was magical, from it's impossible floating continent to the huge structured ward boundary that worked like a massive complicated Bubblehead charm. The observers had panicked at the sight and the sheer magical pressure that the Tower was exerting.

Indeed, even all the way in Britain, the accidental magic detection leyline grid in the ministry was still picking up odd flares. The Tower was exuding magic across a significant portion of the world, its zone of influence stretched from the middle of the USA to over most of Europe. Virtually all of South America and Africa was within its zone.

Some more superstitious magicals had wondered if Avalon, or another mythical land, had reappeared.

There was no way to keep the Tower a secret. Warding such a huge structure was totally impossible even with the ridiculous magical energies the Tower itself was employing. It would be like trying to hide Europe. Even if successful, any Unplottability ward would still leave the muggles wondering about the huge hundred odd kilometer hole in their maps. Besides, the muggles had already seen it appear and fire its weapon, a huge portion of the world already knew of its existence.

The Statute of Secrecy was dead.

Any intelligent witch or wizard would be able to conclude that much, so of course the rest of the ICW was burying their heads in the sand and squabbling about what to do about the Tower. Not that any conclusion could be reached of course, since one satisfactory to the Warlocks, namely protecting the Statute, was impossible.

What was worse was that one group of the observation party had decided to try confronting the Tower and had apparated to it in direct contradiction of ICW orders.

They did not see what Albus had seen at the floating observation post. The Tower was not whole. It bore scars, damage and its magic, while strong compared to anything else on Earth, was wounded and full of grief. Fully trusting one's magical senses was foolish, but he was rather optimistic about its friendliness. After all, there was also a tenuous thread of hope. He had not mentioned this, knowing that it would be treated as just more of his battiness and old age.

Dumbledore sighed to himself at his podium, somewhat wishing that he hadn't accepted the Supreme Mugwump position all those years ago.

* * *

 _Background information:_

 _The Planet Regeneration Project (AT3) has failed, Tyria is dead and the Tower of Harvestasha collapsed. What few refugees survived now exist on the 1st Tower. A plan is hatched to help everyone survive by transferring the 1st Tower to another world._

 _Metafalica (name of the land Infel Phira was turned into at the end of AT2) now supports the entirety of the Metafalss (AT2) population. Frelia and most of the 2nd Tower's vital functions have been moved to Metafalica and the entire Metafalica was moved to the 1st Tower. The 2nd Tower was then deconstructed to repair the 1st Tower as much as possible._

 _The Orgel of Origins (and Ar Ciel) is sacrificed in this dimensional transfer._

 _To power the 1st Tower's functions, all the Reyvateils are now connected through the Parameno Discs, which have been remodeled into the new Symphonic Linker module. Yes, this means they did engineering below the Sea of Death at very high cost._

 _Symphonic Linker provides power the same way Infel Phira provides power, only it is much more powerful as it draws from the entire reyvateil population, not just the IPDs. Shurelia is the Administrator for this, the same way Cloche is for Infel Phira._

 _Chorus mentioned here is a new function of the Symphonic Linker, a Song that does nothing but boost the power a reyvateil is contributing through the Symphonic Linker._

 _Symphonic Linker power means that all reyvateils feel a bit more exhausted as if they have been doing some singing, even if they have done nothing the whole day. Additionally, all reyvateils are under Song Magic rationing, as any Song Magic imposes a burden on the system that other reyvateils have to pay for. Major Tower actions like the Tower Connection beam, increasing Plasma Bell power, etc. all require at least some proportion of the total reyvateil population to sing in chorus._

 _A new Orgel could potentially be built from the fragments of their dimensional transfer, much the same way the original Orgel was built from the remnants of Ra Ciel Fusor. This would become important later as it would be the primary goal of the AT peoples._

 _The Tower lost 1 kilometer of height after the transfer due to the mountain that is its foundation sinking into the ocean._

* * *

 _AT non-canon (or unconfirmed) interpretations:_

 _The 1st Tower is 110 km high. This places the Observatory in "space"._

 _The Metafalica (Infel Phira) and Sol Marta satellites can hover through internal power._

 _The collected Dynamic H-waves provide sufficient power for not just Song Magic but also the Plasma Bell and Musical Corridor. This is obviously not the case for Infel Phira so this is a major non-canon thing._

 _Healing Song Magic that can raise in the game will work on the recently dead (a few seconds) that do not have special conditions._

* * *

 _Crossover interpretations:_

 _The usual alien problems (disease, food, atmosphere) don't apply. Ar Tonelico biochemistry is assumed to be compatible with Earth's._

 _All of Ar Tonelico technology uses Symphonic Power. Electricity is employed as a power source, nothing more._

 _Earth does not have a Heart of the Land. This makes the planet much more stable than Ar Ciel, but also disables magical manipulation of the planet itself. The planet is in a magically neutral state, to do anything to it, you'll have to provide all the power instead of getting help from the Planet Wills._

 _The Tower appears mid-way through Harry's 1st Year. Events of AT1 & AT2 go more or less as canon._

 _Harry Potter magic is a lot like Teru magic in fundamentals, but can't be employed by each other. In essence, the Teru would be classified as magical non-humans by HP wizards._

 _Song Magic operates in the same domain as Harry Potter magic (Static H-waves = HP soul; Dynamic H-waves = HP magical energy), but the structure is completely different. Song Magic is fundamentally technological and would appear to Harry Potter wizards as essentially magitech. Insanely complicated, very inefficient and contains unneeded complexity. A bit like the difference between programming in assembler vs in a higher order language._

 _The same applies to Grathmelding in comparison to HP enchanting. Grathmelding is mediated through the Silver Horn and thus also a technologically guided process._

 _HP magic is much faster than Song magic, but any individual Reyvateil can easily channel far more power than any HP wizard even in ritual. In many ways, HP magic can find a way to exploit gaps in Song magic defences given sufficient analysis (which could be hard!) but Song magic can be adjusted far more rapidly (even on the fly!) than HP wizards can craft spells. Since Song magic operates at a higher abstraction level than HP magic, HP magic can always find vulnerabilities; but Song magic is much easier to change, being sing and wish hard._

 _Ar Tonelico peoples are not significantly hardier than Earth peoples, meaning they're like muggles. HP wizards thus enjoy a certain level of physical robustness advantage compared to Ar Tonelico peoples (and reyvateils are even more fragile than most). On the other hand, Harmonics projects a forcefield when raised, this is the manifestation of hitpoints in the AT games, and that forcefield is far more powerful than shields cast by HP wizards plus also assists the benefactor's efforts. The greater feats in combat are all due to Harmonics. Harmonics can happen whenever a reyvateil recognizes an ally is present and tension increases above a low threshold. Weapons or combat are not required for Harmonics, just a sense of danger._

 _The Killing Curse is unblockable by any magical defence (including Harmonics, Song magic, etc.), indeed it will pass through a Song magic manifestation as if it wasn't there. It will kill you if it hits (but the note on Healing Song Magic and raising applies). On the other hand, it's slow and you can always throw a cloak at it._

 _Powerful wizards like Dumbledore and Voldemort would be roughly evenly matched with a regular reyvateil in power output (but far faster in speed and precision). Any reyvateil who has progressed to L5 or higher in the cosmosphere (True Self worlds) would be more powerful than any wizard on Earth._

 _HP wizards do not get exhausted by casting normal spells (any more than chanting and waving a stick might for anyone else), special spells might demand more from the caster. Reyvateils recover their energy relatively quickly when not singing too._

 _Reyvateils are not innately magical. Indeed, none of the Ar Tonelico people will be wizards and likewise, none of the Earth people would be Reyvateils. At least until crosses happen._

* * *

 _Spoilers since continuation not guaranteed:_

 _Certain plot important Harry Potter magical artifacts, especially the sort that are unreproducible, are actually Sound Science devices. Eg. the Philosopher's Stone, Veil of Death, and the Deathly Hallows._

 _(Philosopher's Stone in particular is the core of a generalized D-Wave converter, and is actually able to transmute anything into anything else with sufficient power)_


	2. Chapter 2 - HP

_A/N: This part happens directly after the AT sections last chapter, but before the Dumbledore part in the ICW chambers._

* * *

The three stood in front of the huge door. Dividing Gate B0 was the external ground entrance to the Tower that used to be below the Sea of Death and had hence suffered from weather over the long centuries, but not human hands. Not that the wizards knew that of course. They just knew it was too big to open by hand.

The base of the Tower was as wide as some mountains and sat a good half kilometer above sea level. The Tower's roots extended downwards, tapering from metal to rock so smoothly that there was no telling where the land ended and the Tower began. Below them, the new island was sharp and jagged, nothing at all like a normal island should be. It was just a bare rock. No sand, no soil, not even the smallest plant or bit of algae. The grey stone mountain that extended down underwater into the depths.

Above them, the Tower. Even next to the floating continent visible in the distant sky, the Tower was so massive that it was hard to conceive of. They felt like they were in front of an unimaginably tall cliff. Not an actual Tower like they saw from far away.

Tom hissed at the other two, "are you sure this is a good idea? Who knows what could be inside? This Tower has to be the work of some immensely powerful wizard!"

Dickens snarled at him sharply, "don't be a fool. Do you see any footprints? Any signs of life? We'll show those fools, bring back some artifact and show them that sitting on our asses isn't going to help! Observation only, bah! What are they doing when the Statute is in danger! Fools!"

Harley raised a pair of hands, pushing them apart, "fight later boys, we've got a door to open. "

She looked pointedly at Tom, who gulped and raised his wand at the door. "Alohomora!"

The magic reached out into the door and nothing happened for a few seconds.

Just when they were about to relax, a strange woman appeared out of thin air in front of them. She was transparent, not colourless like a ghost but as if someone had made a human out of glass. She had black hair and eyes, wearing robes coloured white and red in a style reminiscent of the oriental countries. What was distinctly worrying was her armoured plates on her arms and head. And the fact that she was hovering three feet off the ground.

" _Unauthorized entry attempt detected, identification requested._ " Her emotionless voice echoed in a way that was distinctly artificial, as if she was talking to them through a wizarding wireless.

"Are you the one responsible for this?" Dickens demanded, brandishing his wand, "and speak English!"

The transparent woman reacted not at all save to repeat her statement.

"Wait," Tom held up a hand, "I think this isn't a person. It's like a dumber painting. You know, like the ones Hogwarts uses as doors to the common rooms. "

"A painting, huh? Seems inferior," Dickens snorted, "and I went to Durmstrang, I don't know what Hogwarts uses for gatekeepers. "

Harley patted Dickens down again, "It doesn't have to be lifelike or particularly intelligent if its just there to check passwords. Ignore it. We've got cursebreaking to do. "

The two wizards looked at each other and set about casting detectors and arithmancy spells at the door. Harley instead walked around the strange ghost-like painting, opting to attack the door from its security. The transparent woman never turned around, simply repeating her statement at fixed intervals.

A few minutes of analysis had determined that the door was indeed warded to stay closed unless triggered by something further up the Tower. Indeed, there was a constant magical flow from the Tower to the door to the gatekeeper. They had not been able to determine what the password could be since the portion that actually recognized passwords was also further up the Tower.

It was an interesting concept, to have a central control for the strange layered wards set into the Tower's material and general area. The spells were all unnecessarily complicated, with extra arithmantic portions at many steps, but Tom could appreciate the genius that had gone into designing such a system. If the whole Tower operated the same way, whoever was positioned at where those control lines lead would be able to control the entire Tower from the weather control ward down to each individual door.

Plus, it seemed as if the system was built to be used by other people who knew nothing of how it worked.

"Ah," Tom said as he dug into the ward to analyze it further. His habitual spell decomposer broke enchantments apart for easier analysis but with an externally controlled ward? A bad idea. His analysis barely had time to recognize that the signals between the controller and the ward suddenly increased when the transparent woman became more lifelike in her actions.

She spun around to face Tom who was right in front of the door. Part of her moved through Harley but nothing appeared to happen.

" _Hacking Tower security will attract penalties, desist at once!_ " Her voice actually sounded angry now, though still not losing its artificial tone.

"What did you do?" Harley screamed at him, the threads of light from her wand still connected to the gatekeeper's back. "Something just changed with the gatekeeper, you woke the ward!"

"I just used a decomposition, this thing is too complicated to understand otherwise!" Tom shot back.

Dickens snarled and pointed his wand at the door, "then we have no time to waste, get away Tom! Bombarda!"

Tom dived out of the way from the man's spell. The ripple of force slammed into the stone wall, sending a shockwave outwards that nearly deafened Tom as he rolled back onto his feet. He felt a kick in his lungs drive the air out of him and forced himself to gulp some air down.

Tom looked up to see the door completely unharmed, all the force apparently reflected into a burst of sound.

The transparent gatekeeper had simply vanished, leaving Tom and Harley wondering if anything was going to happen. It just seemed to make Dickens angrier, who proceeded to launch reductors and piercing hexes and even more dangerous spells at the door, all to no effect.

He was about to try Fiendfyre and Tom about to stop the crazy man when a whistling from above announced the arrival of four things.

Two grey humanoids were only that in shape, with a single long tail instead of legs, but with a clear head and torso and two arms. The whole body however rippled unsettlingly, as if the metallic surface was liquid. The other two were green coloured with gold lines. The top body resembled one of those muggle aircraft noses, tapering down into a spike below. The main body was flanked on each side by two floating panels.

The four things, probably security golems of some sort, had apparently flown down from above and now surrounded them on all sides. Tom felt Dickens and Harley press up behind him, backs to each other.

The humanoid golems' tails sharpened into a hard point and the other two deployed straight rods out of hidden panels under them. Tom might not know what they could do, but he could recognize that the golems were threatening them.

The transparent woman reappeared and gestured to them, " _This is the Tower Security Protocol Mei Mei, you are wanted for questioning, do not resist and you will not be harmed._ " Her appearance was getting more lifelike each time but her voice still retained the same artificial quality.

"I think she's asking us to surrender," Tom muttered.

"Screw that!" Dickens yelled, "reducto!"

The spell blast shot forwards and slammed into the non-humanoid golem in front of him. Instead of disintegrating a chunk, the spell washed over a shield that seemed to hug the golem's surface. Glowing hairline cracks spread over the shield but the spell did not penetrate.

"You hot headed idiot!" Harley screamed as the golems surged towards them, "Disillusion and Notice-me-nots now!"

Tom tapped his head and waved his wand, feeling the familiar egg cracking on his head. The three of them were good enough at the charm to disappear almost instantly and they dived to the side as the golems... continued to track them perfectly. How were they doing that?!

Tom fired a bombarda at the humanoid golem chasing him with hands outstretched. Surprisingly, the spell passed straight through the golem's shield and blasted onto its chest. The golem just rippled and continued on without losing a beat. Tom cursed Dickens' stupidity again and put a featherlight on his own legs to run faster.

Dickens cursed again as he blasted out a nasty transfiguration based curse that cracked the first golem's damaged shield further. It didn't help him when one of the humanoid golems sprang into the air and descended on him like a giant's knife, spearing him through the thigh.

Dickens' screams finally got Harley to notice a lack in the Tower's defences, "raise a shield and apparate! They haven't set anti-apparition jinxes!"

Harley shielded a blast of something from a non-humanoid golem then twisted on the spot and disappeared with a loud pop.

Tom blocked the humanoid golem spearing for him with a protego only to receive a bolt from the non-humanoid golem with the cracked shield which had taken flight above them. The bolt hit him on the head and Tom slipped onto the hard rocks, the world spinning woozily around him.

The last thing he saw was Dickens apparating out as well, along with the humanoid golem still stuck in him.

* * *

Shurelia had the urge to hit her forehead as two of the intruders disappeared into thin air, taking the Type Zero with them. "Mei Mei, since when does 'talk to them' mean 'detain for questioning and attacking'?"

Mei Mei's hologram just looked at her, "Tower Security Protocol indicates that intruders that attempt to damage the Tower are to be arrested. "

"That does not mean...! Oh never mind, will that one guy live?" she asked.

Mei Mei nodded, "all the Dathzaaks' ammunition were set to non-lethal. The Type Zeros were also configured to disable and capture. "

"Stabbing people in the legs does not sound like disabling," Shurelia muttered, "Leard, how soon can Tenba pick him up? And get them to send a reyvateil healer along, one good enough to heal non-humans in case they only look like us. "

The Platina commander looked up from the communication station, "they're on the way, they'll be there in an hour. The security robots will bring him into the Tower and meet the Tenba airship halfway, in case more of them return. "

"I hope this won't bring us into conflict with the natives. They looked and acted like humans, I understood their gestures and emotions, even if not their language," Shurelia said.

"I'm more worried about the robot they took," Leard replied, "the robot wouldn't work too far from the Tower but they might still learn too much about our security from it. Mei Mei, how soon can you configure the security robots against their hacking attempt?"

"It is already done, sir," Mei Mei bowed respectfully.

"We should analyze all the abilities they displayed. I believe these people have something analogous to Song Magic, employed through those devices they were holding. Or perhaps its like Teru powers," Leard muttered as he set the video of the encounter replaying, the robots' heat vision beside the camera view. "Sasha. "

"I'm already looking through the symphonic sensor records," the young teen was furiously typing away, "I'll have a report ready in a few hours. But we will need to find a way to secure areas against that teleportation they displayed. I think they decompose themselves and anything they touch into dynamic H-waves and project that along with a conversion waveform that converges at the target point to reassemble back into D-waves. It's stupidly risky, they could leave parts of themselves behind if they got it wrong.

But from what I'm seeing, there's no reason why they would be restricted to teleporter points or even line of sight. They could theoretically appear in this room if they knew how to get here. I have a few ideas on how to disrupt the process but it'll take me time to design something that can be grathmelded. It won't be difficult, can Tenba do it? I'm going to be busy. "

Shurelia rubbed her nose as Ayano, the Tenba chairman, who had been listening in began ordering her engineers to help Sasha in the background of her comm connection.

"Any other emergencies?" she asked, looking around the SPU command center. No one brought anything to her attention, blessedly. "In that case, revoke the state of lockdown for the civilian population. Tower security is to remain on high alert. All airship flight are to remain restricted to within the Wings of Horus perimeter. We don't know if the sea is dangerous or not, surface landings will not be permitted for now. Defence staff other than those related to the transition team are to stand down to low alert. Shall we take a break? I think we all need it. "

Shurelia looked around the room as the teams

She couldn't fault the people for wanting to protect themselves, nearly seven hundred and fifty years of Tower Administration was more than enough to remove all naivety from her even if her HD-Cellophane did not allow changes to her personality.

But Shurelia could only hope that all this preparation for hostility did not preclude the possibility of peace.

* * *

"Whatever possessed you three to defy direct orders from the ICW?!" the taskforce leader roared at her.

Harley shook her head, "Dickens was too convinced of the need to do something. I saw that he was going to defy orders and acted to at least try to rein him in. "

"Fat lot of good you did. "

The ICW taskforce had been hastily put together to investigate the magical transport phenomena and had contained cursebreakers, aurors and representatives from some member nations. They had been expecting something to appear in the ocean. But the sheer scale of it, none of them could have expected or prepared for.

The taskforce leader was understandably furious about Harley's excursion. So she pushed everything onto Dickens just as she had planned to. It wasn't as if he was around to defend himself anyway, stuck with the healer as he was.

"At least tell me you learnt something about this," the leader waved out the window. The African man was well known for his magical knowledge however, and everyone on this floating observation ship was curious about the Tower.

"The Tower is centrally controlled, the weather ward, the enchantments that keep the Tower standing, the security wards and doors, all of that are controlled from somewhere up the Tower. I suspect that is also where we will find those responsible," Harley reported. "They used security golems, golems that had strong magical shields that can see through Disillusionment and Notice-me-not. We barely got away. "

"We should be able to learn something from that liquid metal Dickens brought back. " It went unstated that bringing back artifacts when they were stabbed through you was inadvisable.

"It was a golem," Harley clarified, "I don't know why it turned into liquid when we arrived. "

"Did you meet any wizards?"

Harley shook her head, remembering the gatekeeper, "no. The ward greeted us with something like a painting or a ghost. A gatekeeper. Nothing more. "

"Perhaps they simply took too long to arrive?" a familiar ancient voice spoke up.

Dumbledore took the attention of the room, like he always did. "The Tower is very tall. If the controllers were high up, they might have taken too long to get down to the door. The gatekeeper was meant to just stall you. "

That made sense.

"Your actions were foolhardy and may have jeopardized peaceful relations with the Tower," the old man looked down disapprovingly at her.

Harley winced. Somehow, even if she had never gone to his school, the Chief Warlock always had the ability to make her feel as if she was a kid sitting in front of his desk to be scolded.

She also had the distinct feeling that he knew Harley was the one to plant the idea to visit the Tower in Dickens.

Time to talk fast.


	3. Chapter 3 - Muggles

_A/N: The Hymmnos greeting was intended to be: I sincerely wish for mutual peace and understanding with you_

 _I may or may not have constructed that Hymmnos sentence correctly._

 _The next chapter would be about Tom. Which may take a bit more time._

* * *

The first few aircraft to arrive, a few hours after the Tower appeared, were military fighters. They circled in a large holding pattern around the Tower, staying well out of radio interference range. Multiple nations had sent aircraft, of varying capabilities and numbers. The situation was tense, but at least hostilities between the different nation's militaries were unlikely. Everyone had been briefed to stick with their countrymen and avoid potential clashes.

The three hundred kilometer circle drawn in the ocean with ice was also respected. When the floating continent was flying near the service ceiling of most aircraft, it put into perspective just how powerful the aliens were. The older planes couldn't even see the upper surface of the land. Provoking whatever was in the Tower was not high on the list of anyone's priorities.

The USA group arrived first, a quartet of fighters, three tankers and a pair of early warning and control aircraft, launched from a supercarrier group in the Atlantic that was also making its way to the Tower at top speed. Pushing their service ceiling, the early warning aircraft had circled around the three hundred kilometer exclusion zone to try and get pictures and scans of the floating land as well as the Tower.

Despite radio interference, a software filter was hastily assembled to get some at least some radar information.

What it painted was worrying.

Inside the exclusion zone, the weather systems detected were distinctly abnormal. Clouds were in the wrong strata, temperature and humidity was more akin to sea level conditions than the expected rarefied atmosphere.

Most damningly, the top surface of the continent looked inhabited. And temperate. Somehow.

Initial pictures had been met with outright disbelief. There was a major city on the continent near the Tower, one flying city somewhere below, one city even further up on the Tower itself. There was also an even higher flying mini-continent that also had a city. The main landmass held farmed land, villages and towns as well. There was an entire country up there.

Radar returns had also picked up possible aircraft between the cities and the Tower, even if the flight profiles were all too slow. They were even slower than propeller airplanes from the first world war! The aircraft did not leave the bubble of altered climate however, so there were no opportunities to get better information beyond specks in a camera.

The source of the indiscriminate radio energy could not be localized beyond a general section of the Tower somewhere above the stratosphere. Not to say that other sources weren't present everywhere along the Tower, but the main one was up there. Measurements had tentatively placed the source to be the same place as where the freezing beam had originated from.

The Tower itself also had interesting features. Pictures of the entire profile had been taken from all angles, the purpose and design of obvious functional modules debated and analyzed over and over again. The most baffling was of course the giant trio of golden horns, for what purpose that the flaring bell shape was required no one could understand. That couldn't possibly be a giant instrument, right?

The primary metal-like material that made up the bulk of the Tower's structure was also a point of contention. Scientists argued that no material could possibly withstand the compressive forces generated by a hundred kilometer tall, mountain sized Tower. Yet the Tower was standing. Some tried to calculate its density from how the Tower reacted to wind, but the climate bubble appeared to abrogate that entirely. The Tower did not bend with the wind. Trying to estimate the weight from the deformation of the sea floor measured by sonar returns gave the Tower material a ridiculous density of barely more than air. Then again, there was a continent a third the size of California flying at ten kilometers with no apparent support, maybe the same process was applied to the Tower?

Analysis of the various radio energies emitted by the Tower did not yield any obvious digital traffic. Some frequencies were obviously communication, just from the traffic patterns, all analysis indicated that the radio frequencies were not carrying all the signal. And the signals were all analog. Some frequencies might have resembled radar but were not sweeping detectors, instead more resembling broad spectrum jamming. There was no obvious radar tracking of the military aircraft assembling around the Tower either.

In the end, the only conclusion was that the aliens were a mystery.

* * *

Many hours of circling ensued, less well equipped groups had to be rotated out from the lack of fuel. The US group stayed in place and was only added to, tankers ferrying a constant stream of fuel to feed the network of observers. Satellites passing close had been diverted, not too far, and gathered more pictures and information.

Radio telescopes, ground and sea based radar, even sonar stations, were all listening to the aliens' signals. Hoping find a way to communicate.

It was around twenty hours after the Tower appeared that the first obvious return signal was received. Someone from the lower flying city was pinging the US early warning craft with a mirror of its radar emissions.

* * *

The Tenba offices were a beehive of activity. The sea had to be tested for toxicity and diseases, the planet itself had to be explored, the human-like native they had picked up had to be healed and secured.

Ayano looked up as yet another engineer burst into the Tenba command center in Firefly Alley. "Madam, the lower frequencies! The noise in the atmosphere! It's communications and sensors!" the young man bounced excitedly, she gestured indulgently for him to continue, "sometime after we arrived, the number of signals began to increase. Some of these frequency signals appear to be targeted, sweeping over the Tower and Wings of Horus periodically. Some are targeted, they're like torchlights!"

So the natives were trying to find out more about the Tower. Only to be expected of course. "But communications? How can such limited frequencies communicate anything?" she asked him.

The Tenba engineer chirped back, "their precision and localization is much better than ours. Limited to a few frequency bands, communication signals are composed of multiple channels that use frequency modulation to convey information. I believe they use a binary format. Don't ask us to decipher it, without knowledge of their protocols, it's impossible. "

"Any chance they'll be able to receive ours?" Ayano asked.

The man wiggled his hand uncertainly, "Symphonic power does have frequencies in their range, they'll be able to see some of the dynamic D-waves with their equipment but they won't be able to pick up the entire spectrum. No way they'll listen in with just that. But that's not to say they won't build receivers later, especially since the Grathnode Discs would be broadcasting symphonic power over a good portion of this planet. They could eventually analyze it and build their own symphonic power sensors since we're constantly providing an example. "

Eh, not important. The natives reverse engineering a symphonic sensor when they didn't employ symphonic power would be too far in the future. The Grathnode Discs would never be turned off anyway. How their civilization survived without symphonic power was a mystery that had Ayano licking her chops. It had the smell of a profit opportunity.

"What are those sensors of their seeing?"

"Surface scans, general shape and position. Not much more than that," he replied, "it functions by receiving the reflections. Just like shining a light really. "

"Can you build a communicator using their frequencies?"

He shook his head, "our symphonic power are all amplitude modulated. I might be able to design and grathmeld something simple, but we can't match their complexity in the frequencies. I'm sorry, we never optimized those bands because those D-waves are used for short ranged and protocol initialization only. Frankly, most of our H-wave based communications can't even talk to them. "

"Then how about copying one of their signals? We could mirror say, their sensor airships bands and just send it back at them. Hopefully, we can establish some sort of communications protocol so we can tell them to come pick up their guy and arrange a meeting. "

* * *

The mirrored radar signals followed the aircraft around, pinging it with an exact copy of its radar emissions whenever it sent anything.

Hypothetical First Contact folders had been dusted off and made ready, so when something on the Tower began to respond, the Contact team assembled in the Pentagon immediately started to flash prime numbers at the aliens.

It took a few tries before the aliens realized they were supposed to continue the pattern. Some exchanges on each of the radio frequency bands took the aliens yet more time to work out a multiplex signal. Then eventually, after thirty hours of trying to establish some method of communication, a raw audio signal had been established and calibrated with musical scales. Along the way, the alien signal had suddenly become more complicated in fits and starts, as if they were refining their radio equipment every few hours.

The difficulty of the whole process had assuaged fears of omnipotent aliens descending on Earth. From all appearances, the aliens were not geniuses compared to humans. It was becoming apparent that the aliens had sufficiently advanced technology, rather than being superhuman in general.

"Greetings from the peoples of Earth," said the Contact team's male speaker. Chosen to speak what they were told to by the team, to keep the voices constant, the man and woman were distinctly nervous, though none of it appeared in their voices.

"Was Zweie Ra Enne Knawa en Falfa Eazas Yor. _The people of Sol Ciel and Metalfalss express our greetings in peace. Ar Tonelico Administrator Eolia greets you._ " came the first alien voice on Earth. The first part was distinctly musical, as if the speaker was singing, unlike the second half which was in a different language and much more formal tone.

Cheers and high fives in the office was interrupted with the realization that the speaker sounded like a teenage girl. Indeed as the alien speaker appeared to pass off the actual talking to someone else, who repeated the greeting's first two sentences then " _Metafalica Administrator Frelia greets you_ ", it was a different girl's voice. Then the third alien speaker sounded like an older man, who did not sing and was the actual person to start the process of communication.

What if the aliens were not actually aliens but humans after all? That was the question that occurred to everyone there.

Anthropologists, linguists and diplomats immediately pounced, while the Contact team continued to try to establish a protocol for images.

* * *

A grueling week of back and forth attempts at translation later, a very basic understanding of the grammar and vocabulary had been established. Communications were now sent through a satellite instead of a military plane.

Video of the "aliens" had proved they were no such thing. They were perfectly human, if of an ethnicity not found on Earth and a foreign dress culture. The two girls who made the first greeting were always present and they opened every session with the same snatch of song. The song language had not been part of the otherworlders' translation efforts and so the meaning was still unknown. The best guess was that the song language was a traditional or ceremonial language.

The white and green themed girls also seemed to be strangely placed in their hierarchy. They had the most ornate clothing, including slightly transparent wing-shaped attachments for the green girl. Everyone in the video was always deferential and respectful to both of them. But they were not in command. But still made suggestions that were always taken seriously. While three leadership figures had been identified, the two teens were still an enigma, outside their obvious ceremonial functions.

Still, they were much easier to read than the politicians doing the actual talking.

The otherworlders had called themselves Ar Cielans when asked about their planet. But the shadowed expressions, refusal to answer questions and the way that the label was always applied to themselves in past tense implied some very bad news and a possible reason why they had come to Earth. Reassurances had been given that the Ar Cielans had no hostility and sought to further understanding and open trade, along with a lack of any moves to leave their area, meant that the military had been stood down to a lower alert level. Still watchful of course.

The 'claiming' of the ice perimeter was explained as an anti-tsunami measure. The explanation that the Ar Cielans had to prevent the tidal wave caused by their arrival engendered a hope that peace was truly possible. It appeared that the otherworlders were at least trying to stay friendly. The whole area was in international waters anyway, so it still served as a conveniently established boundary that the UN could agree to. The Tower being able to send giant freezing beams within that range and possibly beyond was a strong claim to that territory after all.

A multinational delegation had been flown in from the United Nations to the American supercarrier heading to the Tower. A meeting date had been established for two days later at the rapidly melting ice perimeter, when the American navy group would reach the area. No one else had dared to go past the ice floe yet, even if the Ar Cielans appeared friendly.

So it came as a complete surprise, at least to those not in the know, when a wizard was shown and introduced on camera and the delegation was asked to take him back.

They had tentatively agreed but apart from identifying him as a British citizen, they had not mentioned the wizarding world to the Ar Cielans. Who knew what those crazy magic users might do.

The more astute noticed that the words used to refer to the wizard had the same root as the name for the song language.

* * *

Shurelia frowned as the latest communication session ended with yet another country wanting to make contact. Their understanding of the local language called English had improved far more than the natives did in understanding Cielan due to the presence of that one intruder in questioning. The natives of course had no understanding of Central Standard Note. Cloche's government was also compiling a Pastalian to English translator, with the according restriction on exposure of New Testament of Pastalie. They were not about to teach the locals to interpret Song Magic when they still could not trust them.

The world called Earth was reminiscent of Ar Ciel in many ways. The environment was ideal, reducing the load on the Musical Corridor greatly. It held a patchwork of many different countries, some of which were unfriendly to each other. The tension between the USA and Russia reminded Shurelia of Sol Ciel and Sol Cluster. Down to the way they dragged smaller nations into their conflict.

The fact that they were getting an inside view to how one of the countries, Britain, worked, from interviews with the captured intruder, was not mentioned. The diplomats had not provided anything beyond the most general of details, so none of the Ar Cielan governments had felt the need to show off their advantage.

The complete lack of symphonic technology was puzzling. From what Shurelia knew of the global population and sophistication of the most developed countries, the natives were on par with Sol Ciel's middle days. Her historical study when she was still young had run through that peaceful period when symphonic power was a well used field that supported civilization but not sophisticated enough to destroy the world yet. This civilization should have discovered and made use of dynamic H-waves by now, the easiest to manipulate portion of symphonic power.

Especially when there were people who did employ magic, dynamic H-waves, like the trio who had attempted to hack Tower security to gain entrance and teleported away after one was captured. How such a situation, magic users without magic technology, could have happened was puzzling and none of the people in this Dimensional Transfer team had reasonable answers.

There was also an unstated threat behind some of the bigger players' actions. Not anything concrete that their diplomats had mentioned of course, but Shurelia and her sister Frelia had both felt that the locals had a hidden trump card behind their confidence. Shurelia just hoped it wasn't a weapon, or if it was, that card wouldn't destroy the world like Ar Ciel had.

She suppressed a shudder. May this world never see the horrors she had.

* * *

The ICW continued their useless debates as MACUSA proceeded to listen in on the muggles' effort. There was no need to proceed with a risky, potentially hostile contact operation when the muggles were doing it for them. Though whether they should reveal themselves to the Tower was a moot point now.

All scrying and divination efforts had failed to gather any details. There was just too much magic near the Tower to let such attempts work. Divination was a pretty fragile discipline anyway.

So far, the wizards of the Tower had not revealed the existence of magic to the muggles, instead letting the muggles figure out for themselves just how the obvious Tower abilities were accomplished. Why not was puzzling when the Tower wizards clearly did not have any such thing as a Statue of Secrecy. Just the Tower's existence was enough to conclude that. One did not build impossibly high towers supported with magic if one wanted to stay unnoticed.

The few days into the contact had most of the ICW thinking that the Tower was also going to avoid telling the muggles about magic and breathed a sigh of relief. Dumbledore had felt it necessary to point out that if the Tower knew the muggles did not have magic, then not telling the muggles was expected.

No one had believed him. They had all wanted to think that the Tower was not going to jeopardize the Statute of Secrecy, because there wasn't very much they could do about it if the Tower decided to do so. The encounter with the security golems had been shocking to their confidence.

The three cursebreakers were not the best fighters but they were decent enough. And the fact that four golems and a painting had driven them off was humiliating and proscribed any possible ICW intervention. Even if ICW could scrape together enough forces to attack, even if they could somehow win, it would only be at extremely high cost. Member nations would sooner balk at the cost in money and lives than commit to any sort of operation that might see a war start.

And there was still the beam to worry about. If the magical field being projected, that was even now still detectable, was the extent of the range of the Tower, and ongoing research into the field hinted that it was, that meant the Tower could fire that beam at nearly half the wizarding ministries in the world. Never mind the smaller settlements and magical wilderness zones. From the effect it had had on the ocean, the conclusion was that even if a ward could be designed to specifically counter that beam, the Tower beam was so powerful it would blow past any possible defence and could instantly destroy whole cities.

It was only Dumbledore's counsel that the Tower had no motive to use it, nor any idea where the wizarding communities were, that had prevented a riot in the ICW chambers when the alarming report on the Tower's capabilities had been given.

Talk about a big stick.

So for now, the ICW would watch and wait for an opportunity to introduce themselves.

It was quite the shock, not quite of the same flavour as the muggles', when the Tower wizards had presented Tom to the muggles for collection, mistakenly believing him to belong to the British muggles.


	4. Chapter 4 - HP

Tom woke up with a start to find a strangely dressed woman bending over him and... was she singing?

The woman was young, barely out of her teens. Her form fitting black uniform barely covered her thighs and the waistband that held the robe closed did nothing to narrow the deep neckline. To a pure blood wizard, she was indecent in the extreme.

A cough brought Tom out of his shocked staring and he noticed the armoured knight standing in the room behind the Reyvateil. There was nothing else to call that man other than a knight. Plate armour, of the ancient sort that decorated Hogwarts' corridors, minus the helmet, a muggle fireleg held casually but ready to bring to action, and a real freaking sword strapped to his waist.

There was a slight aura of irritation around the knight, though if he didn't want Tom to get distracted, perhaps the woman should put on more clothing? The knight didn't seem reassured by Tom's confusion.

Their gazes were interrupted when the woman's song died down and Tom realized that her hands had been glowing. And that he felt good, really good. As if he had just spent a day in Pomfrey's tender mercy. That was distinctly not right since Tom last remembered being shot in the head by an energy ball bigger than his head. He tried to sit up and the woman smiled and supported his back gently to prop him against the pillows.

"Are you a healer?" he asked, even if he saw no wands on the woman. Nor the man, come to think of it. Perhaps the man was a squib, given his lack of armaments?

Instead of the expected answer, she simply sang to him. She was a very good singer, as good as any on the Wizarding Wireless, and despite Tom not understanding a word, the song managed to convey a sense of peace and calm.

When she was done, the knight gestured at her and himself, seemingly introducing themselves.

"Er. I'm Tom Liendil," he returned. They didn't understand him of course. And so began the long steps towards trying to understand each other.

It took Tom a surprisingly long time to notice that his wand was gone and all of his clothes were changed.

* * *

"Remember, we have to treat him like a guest," Ayano said, briefing the Tenba knights and the reyvateil healer who would be taking care of this local. "Shurelia has said that we will eventually return this man and we want to give him a good impression of our peacefulness. So treat him with some respect, but not too much. Don't let him wander around, obviously, and don't let anyone unauthorized have access to him. I chose you four because you are the most level headed employees in Tenba, and I expect you to do your part.

Additionally, all of you are to prevent any use of his powers. We already have a prototype teleport inhibitor, but you must try to make it clear that if he tries to teleport or anyone tries to teleport him away, the result will be fatal. Sasha is working on a non-lethal version but this current one destructively interferes with the H-waves involved in the teleport and anyone trying will simply never converge and they'll end up scattered over most of this planet. I know we do not understand his language, unless that's part of his abilities, but I have to ask you to try anyway.

The teleport inhibition range covers this floor of the facility only, so he is not to leave. One of you will accompany him at all times outside his room, we also have monitors recording all activity on this floor. Please familiarize yourself with the special security procedures. His equipment will be stored in a completely different building where we will analyze it non-destructively. If he needs reassurance, tell him that we will return them unharmed when he leaves.

Toko, as the reyvateil attached to our guest, please scan him after every meal to make sure our food doesn't make him sick, your expertise as to his biology will be appreciated. You should also scan yourself and the team to ensure you aren't catching diseases from him. Medical and scientific support will be available if required, please call for them if you feel it at all necessary. "

* * *

Tom was finding his time with the Tower wizards to be quite pleasant. It was an interesting experience, one that he would get endless interviews about if he ever made it back to Britain.

They treated him nicely, the woman singer seemingly not minding Tom occasionally staring at her even if her partner did. Every time they brought him meals, the woman would sing and wave a glowing hand at him, presumably examining him for any issues. It was considerate, especially when all their food was unrecognizable to Tom. At least it appeared that if he got poisoned somehow, his keepers would be there to make sure he didn't die.

His room was a metallic affair, comfortable if stark, the furniture was perfectly recognizable in function and the toilet very muggle. No real surprises or discomfort save for the boring lack of features to rest the eye on. The walls were made of metal plates with visible rivets but the internal furniture were rounded white affairs that looked rather out of place in his jail like surroundings.

On one of the few walks Tom had been allow to take, escorted and limited to a small area of the floor, Tom had gone past a balcony and the dizzying height, where the ocean below appeared as a perfectly flat blue carpet, with the Tower extending below and above until it faded into the distance. The Tower's girth had appeared deceptively small at first, then Tom had watched an airship launched from somewhere nearby crawl towards the Tower and the airship shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until it was nothing more than a tiny speck next to the Tower's immense bulk. And then the green bands and sparkling spots had jumped into clarity, there was an entire series of small grasslands, waterfalls and tiny villages on the Tower itself, all so small from the distance that they looked like a splash of green-brown on a distant mountain.

The sight was intimidating and had reinforced once again just how stupid Dickens' decision to come attack the Tower was. The Tower wasn't the mad construction of a conclave of powerful wizards, it held a country or countries.

The Tower wizards had taken the time to explain to him just what would happen if Tom tried to apparate. It was a very involved series of pantomime and the moving picture of the last part of their fight with the golems, but eventually Tom was made to understand that any attempt to apparate would be fatal due to some ward the Tower wizards were using. They seemed a bit apologetic about that, strangely enough.

That led him to ask where his wand was, as well as the enchanted cursebreaker cloak and ward pins, but they had sensibly told Tom that he would only get those back when he left. That at least was reassuring, that Tom was expected to be let go eventually, probably in exchange for some concessions. It did not bode well for Tom's career but he would take any demotion or being fired for surviving that disaster.

At first, the attempts at communication was difficult. Tower wizards knew no English and indeed, they had had to start from naming objects. Tom was not a great student of languages either, so it was no surprise that his keepers learnt English faster than he learnt Cielan. Even so, the woman's songs remained unusually communicative, and eventually Tom realized the way she could effectively communicate her feelings just by singing was magical in nature.

He didn't quite know what to make of that. By all means, the woman's clearly magical abilities meant she was a witch, but instead of using wands or any other implement, the woman mediated her magic through songs. And she was powerful, judging from the sheer pressure of magic she generated when healing a twisted ankle he had stupidly suffered when he tripped over the doorsill.

Once rudimentary words could exchanged, his keepers had started questioning him in earnest. Interestingly, they focused more on how Britain was run, what its people did and how they lived their lives. Perhaps they knew that Tom couldn't rightly answer any questions about sensitive subjects. But that much was fine, so Tom made sure to give them an overview of Britain, a favourable one of course.

Unsure if they would understand the necessity of the Statute of Secrecy or be offended and decide to blow it open, Tom had opted not to mention it or the muggles. Hopefully, the ICW would contact them about it and get the Cielans to cooperate. Tom was rather pessimistic about the ICW being able to force the Cielans to conceal magic.

A week and one day later, Tom was told, haltingly and with some clarifications, that he would be returned to his people so he said goodbye to the strange Tower wizards and they escorted him to an airship, returned his wand, clothes and equipment in a bag and brought him to meet his government. Tom had not felt the need to immediately apparate away, having built some trust with the Cielans and decided to be polite and cooperate with this meeting.

He regretted that decision when he was escorted out of the airship to see a horde of muggles.

* * *

 **Initial Report on Local H-wave Abilities**

 _by Sasha et al._

 _5 solar rotations after arrival_

Locals that employ abilities have been observed to channel dynamic H-waves. Sensor recordings and composition of their abilities indicate that no network-based magic is in effect. All H-wave construction is performed through the user alone.

This does not rule out multiple users acting in concert but it is believed through other contact and ultra long range scans that widespread use of Sound Science is not employed.

Observations of the short battle with Tower security robots show that the users employ their abilities through an implement. Scans of the wood and magical material implement indicates that the device performs H-wave convergence and improves conversion efficiency, though it is tuned to specific H-wave frequency pattern that would only match a small set of the range of human static H-wave patterns. In effect, the device cannot be employed to its full benefit by similar ability users and not at all by reyvateils who do not have a human-like static H-wave pattern, modification of a device for compatibility is not likely to be useful as the same benefits can be obtained through current grathmeld equipment.

Removal or destruction of the device is likely to greatly reduce the threat profile of local ability users. Many of the complex abilities, especially the displayed security hacking, would be impossible for any human to perform and it is expected that most of the local ability users will not be able to use anything more than undirected energy without these implements. Similarly, use of their abilities parallels Song magic in that it requires keywords and gestures and concentration, however disruption is much more difficult due to the extremely short chants employed. It is suspected that these keywords only aid H-wave convergence of the user and that 'silent' ability use is hypothetically possible.

Examination of the cloak and metal rods indicate that simple but efficient pre-Sound Science devices do exist. Their function and construction could not be determined without destructive testing. However, the use of dynamic H-wave imbued objects parallels synthesis, if not grathmelding.

From the observed abilities and captured devices, it is apparent that these people's abilities have been refined over some period of time. Signs of iterative improvements in the convergence or functional aspects of the invoked abilities' H-waves were noted. Determining the time period of these improvements is impossible however, only that the abilities can be developed and improved, rather than static powers.

Observed abilities are listed below, along with name:

 _unnamed teleport_ \- range is unknown but presumed many thousand stons at least, maximum speed is also unknown but lower bound is at least a thousand ston a second

 _bombarda_ \- a pulse of force that explodes on target, similarity to basic blasting red magic

 _reducto_ \- static D-wave bond disruptor, suspected to decompose non-Harmonics protected targets to a fine powder, however effects were not directly observed

 _protego_ \- generalized D-wave and H-wave reflector, generates a protective field similar to Harmonic fields, power rating limited by user's H-wave capacity

 _disillusio_ \- duplication of dynamic D-wave of visible frequency across field, similar to visible concealment fields, easily defeated by non-visible and H-wave sensors

 _alohomora_ \- applies dynamic D-waves to open a door, observed on the Dividing Gate to no effect, suspected to work on doors unprotected by Harmonic or H-wave fields

Various hacking attempts were also made but these appeared to be less structured magic and more an attempt to interface with or test an extant H-wave field.

Also observed was a dynamic H-wave broadcast suspected to interfere with other dynamic and static H-waves; possibility of a mental influence field but effect was not observed, apparently defeated due to non-human nature of the golems. Destructive interference device is possible and in prototyping.

Effects of observed abilities on Harmonics fields projected by both automated and Vanguard-Reyvateil forces depend on the strength of the dynamic H-waves that need to be absorbed. Linear correlation suspected but insufficient data.


	5. Chapter 5 - Muggles

The ICW was completely deadlocked. Dumbledore sighed as he considered the situation over a rare glass of firewhiskey.

Some of the more unhinged radicals in the ICW wanted to declare war on the Tower. More unhinged than lately, Dumbledore corrected himself, he should have objected more to their instatement from his misgivings so many years ago. Dumbledore had exerted his influence to prevent any of their insane ideas from gaining traction, and mostly succeeded.

That did mean all his political capital as Supreme Mugwump was tied up burying them, so the contact and no-contact faction had become deadlocked. The Contact faction supported opening relations with the Tower and trying to get them to keep the Statute of Secrecy. The No-Contact faction wanted to avoid the Tower and everything it represented, reasoning that if the Tower didn't know about wizards, it wouldn't threaten their way of life.

Some of them wanted to kidnap the cursebreaker about to be presented to the muggles, some of them wanted to obliviate all the muggle leaders afterwards, some had other more exotic ideas. Not all of those who supported certain responses to the immediate crisis were on the same side of the Contact debate.

Now it seemed like every country representative in the chambers had their own agenda and no one could agree on anything.

Perhaps it was time to take action himself rather than prod others into action. Convincing Fudge to make peaceful contact should not be too difficult and with Tom being a British magical citizen, convincing the Tower to return him to the wizarding English should not be too difficult if their promise of return was genuine.

* * *

The American supercarrier had arrived at the melting ice a day ahead of time. The weather was still decent, even if the meteorologists said a tropical storm was brewing from the combination of the ice and the warm humid air generated by the Cielans' weather control. At least the satellite connection to the wider world was not disturbed by the Tower's radio disruption, the nuclear plant had more than enough power to cut through it.

For all that the supercarrier was a floating city, its bulk paled beside the Tower. Some of the politicians gathered in the viewing lounge had grown quiet and worried. Their thoughts were the same. What if the Cielans turned out to be hostile? What if negotiations broke down? What if the Cielans discovered humanity had nothing to offer them?

On the other hand, there was also greed. The implied technological difference meant that any trade from the Cielans would be worth its weight in gold and could possibly transform whole economies. Everything from materials, machines and technology was something that everyone was eager to get their hands on. What would the Cielans want in trade? What would they be interested in?

Speculations were numerous but with the meeting so close, most chose to simply wait.

The day of the first face to face meeting with the Cielans arrived. The sky was grey and dark with impending rain, but a huge area around the Tower remained perfectly clear, a hole the size of a country punched straight through the clouds. From the ground, the grey clouds seemed to cut off in a sharp wall. The presence of the Tower and the floating continent was obvious by the shadows they cast in the sunlit circle, though they couldn't see the continent itself since the 10 kilometer floating height was far above the heavy clouds.

Out of the hole in the overcast sky descended a small fleet of airships. With obvious VTOL capability, the ships appeared to ignore most considerations of aerodynamics that airplanes normally had to pay close attention to. The smaller escort ships had sleek main bodies and multiple protrusions towards the back, the larger bus-like transports were much more bulbous looking.

The common point to all of the ships was a gear-like rotating disc set into the bodies. And furthermore, there were few consistent designs, each ship looking different from the others, save for the trio of blue-silver escorts. And while missile boxes and cannons were easily identified on the escorts and some of the transports, no one really knew if those ships had anything else. All of the radar sets had agreed however that it was extremely easy to spot and range on the Cielan's airships, they did not possess any apparent radar stealth. Indeed, every airship radiated a small amount of radio noise, though in a more limited spectrum than the Tower's.

The meeting was to be conducted on the supercarrier, something the Cielans had asked for by explaining they had no 'waterships' and their airships were not built to land on water.

The clicks of the media cameras was a continuous roar all throughout the approaching and landing, though flashes had been restricted to avoid startling the Cielans. The transports hovered down and landed neatly, disgorging the Cielan diplomatic party down metal ramps with little ceremony.

Some minutes of getting organized, the various transports taking turns to land their complements gave the welcoming diplomatic crew time to observe their guests. Immediately obvious was the two white and green girls, dressed in their supposed ceremonial outfits. All three political leaders were also spotted. Behind them, apparently some sort of honour guard or close advisors were two teams with non-standardized weapons, armour and dress.

Interestingly, the escort guard teams seemed to be armed and armoured in a mix between a medieval knight along with gun-like sidearms. Beside them were lightly dressed, apparently unarmoured, women whose role was rather puzzling. Their sharp eyed escort behaviour did show them as security, however the slightly revealing uniform and complete lack of weapons was at total odds with that observation.

It had appeared that the Cielans had sent most of their leaders, even the two symbolic girls. Whether this was a gesture of trust or one of confidence in their superiority, only time would tell.

The Cielans eventually organized themselves, with the leaders in front and the mass of aides, secretaries and support personnel behind. The white and green girls stepped forward.

"We, the peoples who came from Ar Ciel, greet the peoples who live on Earth, in peace," they said together in rehearsed English, "Eolia and Frelia present our Song of Welcome in chorus. "

A little grammar error was easily forgotten when the song began.

The song started with a simple duet between the two girls, Eolia and Frelia, but each of the women in the honour guard and the escort joined in a rousing chorus. All present could feel in the song a measure of cautious trust, but primarily one of hope for peace and prosperity. Mysteriously, most of the recordings made had captured the song in its full glory despite the less than ideal acoustics of the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Later, the Song of Welcome as sung at Contact would find itself one of the most listened to performances in modern history, going down as one of the pivotal history defining moments. Even when the natural singing ability of reyvateils became known and the auditory perfection of Song Magic became commonplace, the Song would always hold a special significance for those who had heard its first performance in person.

Not unnoticed was the sound of instruments that apparently was coming out of nowhere. There were no obvious electronic speakers and the airships were hovering too far away to hear, so the presence of what sounded like a full orchestra of non-standard instruments came as a surprise. Then additional choral voices were added, some of them not even synced to the voices of the present singers! These observations were only made by those viewing the meeting by remote though, the diplomatic teams there in person were more captivated by the song.

Back in the command center of the aircraft carrier, the radar and radio was going haywire. Right as the song began, the Cielan party had suddenly become a massive source of radio emissions. Altogether, the fifty odd people standing on the deck were outputting as much radio waves as the carrier's primary radar operating at full power. After a short scramble, the whole spectrum was meticulously recorded for later analysis but orders were given not to panic and to give no sign to the Cielans that anything had happened at all.

* * *

"I simply don't see why we have to be the country to take the risk. Once the ICW have come to a decision, Britain can simply follow. If you act and it blows up in your face, how will you explain that our Chief Warlock decided to go against ICW resolutions?!"

Dumbledore cursed to himself as Fudge babbled and waffled on the point. The Minister for Magic was far too cowardly and was just going to stall him.

Perhaps the time had come for him to act on his own. A little warning to the muggle Prime Minister should be enough to get Tom home safely and without incident while also gaining more time for the ICW to decide on a course of action.

* * *

The British Prime Minister was not an unintelligent man. When an elderly wizard who was not the Minister for Magic appeared in his office to tell him that the intruder the Cielans were returning was a British wizard, he immediately deduced that the magical world was also paying attention to the events around the Tower. For all their reclusiveness, the Tower was something they were worrying about too.

The request to repatriate the British wizard while making sure that guy did not use his magic as well as telling the Cielans that magic was not used on Earth? Well, he could achieve the first half quite easily, hopefully the British wizard was not dumb enough to use his magic on camera. But to not tell the Cielans about the magical world? And the fact that the wizards had apparently sent someone to the Tower and got caught?

Perhaps the Cielans had magic and the wizards did not want them to know magic existed on Earth?

He might be able to find a use for the Cielans if that was the case.

The Statute of Secrecy was something that had always chafed on the Prime Minister and all his predecessors. The need to remain secret and the magical world's internal strife had resulted in a large number of injustices against British citizenry. The memory wiping was more than bad enough to want the Statute to be removed, the fact that there was no way magical criminals could be brought to task for crimes against non-magical citizens was an affront to Britain's sovereignty. The only reason why he and the past Prime Ministers were tolerating this set of circumstances was because there was nothing he could do about it.

For now.

There had been a top secret project between the NATO countries on this very issue. Some of the very highest levels of governments in the know, and their predecessors, had forged a long term plan to slowly put pressure on the Statute. Surveillance cameras were stealthily subsidized, development of methods that broadcasted information further and faster were encouraged in universities. The burgeoning Internet would soon make any breach in the Statute very difficult to cover up. All to slowly make inevitable the time when the Statute of Secrecy would become non-viable.

The government could break it open by publishing what they knew of wizards, but that would never happen. Not with the wizards being able to remove memories and physical evidence with trivial ease. Instead, they had chosen a path that would erode the areas in which wizards could remain secret as well as increase the risk of exposure with each breach.

Optimistic estimates had put the fall of the Statute in less than twenty years.

Records of certain magical crimes were held in top secret locations with time capsules, records of wizards abusing their power and getting away with it. Material meant to turn public support against the magicals were acquired. All perfectly true. When the time came, a reckoning would be demanded.

And now. Now, with the arrival of these Cielans who might have magic, and the radio disruption was very reminiscent of the electronic failures near magic, perhaps there was a faster way. And if their prayers were answered, the Cielans might even have ways to defend against the magical monsters the wizards always justified themselves as defending the non-magical people against.

The Prime Minister picked up the hotline to the United States Presidential Office.

* * *

After the performance of the Song of Welcome, the Cielan party had been invited below deck to one of the bigger meeting halls for the main meeting. Food had been provided for the participating nations' diplomats, with some extra for the Cielan party, but the Cielans had indicated ahead of time that they would bring their own. While the intruder had shown Earth peoples could eat Cielan food, the inverse was not necessarily true.

Before any points could be made, and with unanimous support among the Cielan delegation, the two girls Eolia and Frelia had declared that the Cielans would not interfere in Earth conflicts except for self-defence. While this posed no guarantee that support in other ways, like technology or economic, would not favour particular allies, this came as somewhat of a relief. The uncertainty that might have occurred if they could be persuaded to back one power bloc or another would be severely detrimental to their declared peaceful intentions.

The United Nations had of course replied with a statement that recognized the Cielans' existence as a state and their current three hundred kilometer radius border in the ocean. All of that was already arranged by previous discussions and only formalized here with public statements of intent.

Once the delegation had broken up into smaller groups to build some groundwork for later discussions on trade issues, the British Prime Minister had met with Eolia and Frelia to return the wizard.

Rather bewildered at the mass of muggles, Tom the cursebreaker had been kept out of the spotlight and led to a private discussion room, along with Shurelia and Frelia, plus two rather intimidating men as escorts. The sword and lance looked sharp and definitely well practiced.

"There you are," the British Prime Minister said, "some old dodder from the Ministry of Magic wanted me to get you back without making a mess. You didn't use magic here, did you?"

Tom shook his head. It was good that he didn't make waves but the Prime Minister could not help but be slightly disappointed he hadn't accidentally set off some magic and blown the Statute out of the water during the most important diplomatic meeting in recent history. It might have just been brushed off as the Cielans' doing though.

"Well then, you're in private here, I'm sure you will be able to make your own way back?" the Prime Minister asked, and with only a slightly frosty glare, Tom pulled out his wand, turned the ashtray into a portkey and disappeared.

Darn, and he just had to take the ashtray too.

The Prime Minister then got up and knocked on a side door. From behind it, came the waiting President of the United States, along with both the British and the US secret service escorts. The few who they had briefed about the magicals.

Throughout the entire exchange, the two girls and their two escorts appeared to be visibly confused.

"Do forgive me for that unseemly display, our relations with the magical world are secret and not completely friendly. I'm sure you're somewhat confused now," the British Prime Minister chuckled darkly, "so allow the President and I to give you an overview on some secrets. "

The subsequent explanation about the hidden magical world, and the policies that enforced the Statute as well as what little both of them knew about the ICW, took more than three hours of back and forth questions. Through it all, Eolia and Frelia stayed remarkably levelheaded and mature for such young girls, not giving away anything about what the Cielans might possibly know about the matter, despite their emotions being easily readable to even a marginally competent politician.

Not a few times, the two men escorting them also asked questions that no secret service person would voice in a high level meeting. Issues like whether trade between the non-magical and magical worlds were present, where the borders were, and similar practical details. It appeared that what the UN group had deemed to be an elite guard party was rather more political than they had first assessed.

Once the briefing was over, the US president nodded, "Eolia, Frelia. Having this understanding of our situation, we hope that there might be some way your peoples can help us. Our non-magical people are suffering injustices daily. It is our assessment that you are aware and use magic in some fashion and clearly do not have such secrecy. We hope that you can help serve as a force to bring the magical world to light and let us address our grievances. Or if you will not, at least this information might prevent your countries from being afflicted with the wizards. "

* * *

In a separate room some time later, Shurelia and Frelia gathered their friends and advisors, leaving the information exchange to the diplomats.

The briefing about the secret magical world caused not a small amount of confusion. After all, how such a state could have happened or why it persisted for two centuries was reminiscent of the problems in the world they had left behind. It had the smell of a crisis of the sort that sent both Lyner and Croix on their journeys.

Jacqli was reminded of her treatment and wondered if the magical worlds had been persecuted at some point. Cloche and Leard were more worried about the potential political entanglements that now threatened to jeopardize even the most basic of trade agreements. The wizarding world would not look kindly on the Cielans trading symphonic power technology with the non-magicals, if magic was the local term for symphonic power as looked likely.

The use of memory charms, casual mind control and ubiquitous surveillance needed for near instant responses was disturbing to most of them. That was a level of control and paranoia that did not speak of good things, the fact that the three intruders were therefore a probe into the Tower's defences was suddenly much more sinister.

Leard looked to Sasha, who had immediately made a note to look into the possibility of using SH servers to restore memory deleted from third generation reyvateils, and symphonic power protections against such attacks. Judging from the effects wielded by the intruders however, a simple harmonics field should be able to scramble any attempt at memory modification, though combat only protections were not reliable enough.

It was after Krusche brought up the possibility of using missile launchers slaved to parameno H-wave detectors to automatically fire on any detected magic use, that Lyner put his foot down.

"It is too early to start talking about military options," Lyner said, interrupting the discussion, "we have not heard from the wizarding world, the intruder Tom did not answer many questions apart from their daily life. Did we not learn anything from Tastiella's trial?"

His words brought the discussion to a halt as the more excitable members calmed down. "We do not understand the reasons why the wizarding world took such actions," Lyner continued, "as I see it, our original plan, to exchange information, to learn about each other, has not changed. We merely have one more faction or factions whose needs we need to understand before any solution can be considered. "

Leard huffed, with a thin smile, "perhaps you should be Platina's leader, son. "

"I didn't intend to usurp your authority, father. "

The older man just smiled at Lyner's suddenly abrasive tone, "of course not. I would not have imagined you would want it. "

Rather used to their father-son tension, most of the people there just hid small smiles.

Cloche raised a hand formally, "Metafalss agrees. I do think that while it is prudent to have the ability to defend ourselves, pursuing embassies and political exchanges should not stop because of the presence of this local tension. We merely need to make clear that our resolution to remain neutral extends to both the non-magical and magical societies. I do not believe any of us here are willing to stick our noses into a possible impending crisis without a full understanding of the picture. Our experiences show clearly what happens if we act without adequate information. "

Indeed, while the whole Sublimation incident might have been engineered by Infel, that did not mean that each of the actors were not pursuing their own goals with only a flimsy belief that what they were doing was right. An unjustified belief whose flaws later turned out to be disastrous.

Ayano looked up from the hastily put together dossier compiled by Tenba negotiators, "in any case, we cannot trade anything to them in large numbers without constructing port facilities at the Tower's base. These people use waterships for goods transport just like we use airships and their initial proposed trade volumes are huge. The most we can do for now is to set up a joint research facility to examine the differences in our technological base, to inform what the shape of future trade will look like. That is of course the most optimistic proposal so I am willing to compromise commercial interests for the sake of political considerations. "

Shurelia looked at Frelia as they sensed the mood had come to a conclusion. "Then it seems we stay on the original plan. There is no need to unduly restrict trade in symphonic technology just because of this," Shurelia said, speaking for the less talkative Frelia, "Leard, Ayano and Cloche, please proceed as we discussed on embassy rights and an exchange of publicly known information. Radolf, Lyner and Croix, as leaders of the most organized military forces, can we leave it to you to consider self defence measures in case of attack by these wizards?"

Croix glanced at Cloche who gave a minute nod. "Of course, the Metafalica knights agree. " "You can count me, Shurelia. " "The church is always at your service. "


	6. Chapter 6 - HP

_A/N: Somehow, I feel like I'm writing a triple crossover here with Ar Tonelico / Harry Potter / Real Life..._

 _The Professor hints a bit at how the magic systems crossover here._

* * *

Harry looked up at the flapping of wings heading towards him. More precisely, towards Hermione.

One copy of the Daily Prophet landed in her lap and she gave the owl the prepared stack of three knuts ahead of her plates.

This much wasn't unusual in the last few days. After the magical pulse that even untrained first years could sense, singing over the Hogwarts wards and nearly rousing her security golems, Hermione had immediately sent for a subscription for the Daily Prophet as had many of the school.

What was unusual today was the four owls without Hogwarts crests winging their way down to her, jointly carrying a stack of more newspapers and a package. They deposited their load onto Hermione and began flying off.

Hermione glanced over the Daily Prophet's cover page and put it aside to tear into the other package.

Feeling curious, Harry peeked over his breakfast. It contained a stack of newspaper pages. Muggle newspapers. As Hermione lifted them out of the package, already reading them hungrily, he could see the topics of the articles were all about the Tower.

Well, that much was obvious. All the headlines everywhere had been taken up by the arrival of the Cielans in their Tower and the floating continent.

"Yes, I knew it!" Hermione crowed, "the muggle newspapers are much less unbiased than this rag. "

"Does that mean I can have it?" Ron asked, reaching across the table only to have it snatched out from under his hand.

Hermione simply had to glare at him, both of the boys knew that she treated her books well and apparently even the Daily Prophet had the same treatment nowadays. Woe be to anyone who took the first reading of her newspapers.

"Ron! I'm still reading that," Hermione snapped, unfolding the Daily Prophet next to pages from The Times, The Independent and a special issue Economist. She had to shoo Harry and Ron's plates away and occupied a whole four seats worth of table space, but Harry and Ron had gotten used to the habits of Hermione in research mode in a scarily short amount of time.

Harry watched, chewing on his bacon toast, as Hermione's eyes dart from one newspaper to the other. For all he could tell, she was reading them all at once. Ron just looked at the muggle newspapers with some curiousity, poking at the unmoving pictures.

"Well, it does seem as if the Cielans are peaceful," Hermione said, "and I guess that was why my parents also sent me this. "

She opened the package to reveal a vinyl disc. "They knew I was going to want to hear the Song of Welcome and must have recorded this specifically for me," she said with a smile.

She put it aside though and went over the papers again, skimming through the many pages of analysis and editorials. "Hm," she tapped the end of her spoon at the speculation of Cielan technology, "I suspect the Statute of Secrecy is doomed. "

"But doesn't the Prophet say that the Tower is going to provoke action from the ICW? They'll set up a Statute enforcing task force soon enough," Ron said, in between bites of his scrambled eggs.

Hermione looked at him until he stopped eating, before replying, "I doubt any ICW task force can preserve the Statute. From what the muggles think, and what we know about their arrival, I think they have managed to create magical technology. They won't just stop using it because the ICW told them to. "

"But... that can't happen. The ICW must protect the Statute," Ron said, "that's their job!"

There was a long moment when she just looked back with a curious look on her face, "Ron, you know, I am sorry for thinking you were just too lazy to do your work. "

Ron scowled, "yeah, just because I don't like living in the library doesn't mean I'm dumb. Besides, anyone knows that you do not flout the Statute. ICW task forces are no joke. "

"Well, Weasley, you can't expect a muggle like her to understand that. "

Harry was suddenly not enjoying his morning tea any more. That voice was definitely not something he wanted to hear this early in the day. Or at all really.

"Malfoy," he said as Ron turned around to find the three stooges looming behind him.

"Well there, I see someone's all hardworking in the morning," the Slytherin scoffed at Hermione's newspaper spread, ignoring her returning glare like he always did. "Aren't you just wasting your time? This whole thing will blow over soon enough. An ICW task force will make sure the Tower doesn't violate the Statute. Not that the muggles could even learn magic anyway. "

"And can the ICW deal with a society that doesn't have a Statute of Secrecy? If the Tower itself is magical, the Cielans will all know about magic, even if not all of them can use it. " And there was Hermione's argumentative side. Harry swallowed his tea and forked more mushrooms into his mouth, even if eating them in Malfoy's presence made them unenjoyable, he wasn't going to waste food.

"Well, even if they don't have the memory charm, the ICW can do it for them," Malfoy shrugged, "we can teach them how to do it if need be. "

Hermione stared at Malfoy in blank confusion. For that matter, Harry was as well. More strangely, Ron seemed to be torn between wanting to agree with Malfoy's points and to disagree just to be contrary.

"You're talking about using the memory charm on an entire society," Hermione said disbelievingly, "and what makes you think the Cielan wizards will even want the Statute to be enforced?"

Now it was Hermione's turn to be stared at in confusion as Malfoy and even Ron didn't seem to be able to process her words. Crabbe and Goyle didn't count.

She huffed and leapt onto her chair, raising her voice over the low level hubbub of the Great Hall at breakfast, "does anyone here think the Cielans will be a threat to the Statute of Secrecy?"

That got some blank stares as well. The vast majority of the students who looked at her didn't seem to understand what she was saying. Only a few muggleborn were clearly frowning.

"What are the Cielans?" "Are you talking about the Tower?"

Instead of asking the smattering of questions from the Ravenclaw table, Hermione just sank back into her seat slowly, staring at nothing in particular.

Then she looked at Harry, "is this... is this really happening?"

Harry shrugged, "I don't think anyone is worried. "

"But how?! This is the biggest thing that has ever happened in history! How can they not even be a little concerned?!" Hermione cradled her head over the mess of her newspapers, "how can this be happening?"

"I assure you, Miss Granger, that reality is just as it was yesterday, it is indeed 'happening'. " The voice of their strict professor interrupted them, causing Malfoy to pale a little. Though he hadn't had time to be anything more than annoying yet so he stood his ground. Professor Mcgonagall raised an eyebrow at Hermione's papers but did not comment further.

"Professor, please tell me you don't also think the Cielans won't be a big issue," Hermione looked up at her with teary eyes.

"I think that these issues are far above the concerns of a first year student, who should be worrying about homework. " Hermione's expression was one of horror but their head of house just continued.

"Now, is there a problem here?" with this, she shot Malfoy a suspicious look.

Who scowled out a "no professor" begrudgingly.

"Well, at least you having it out with words and not spells. See that it stays that way," Mcgonagall was turning to leave when Hermione grabbed her sleeve.

"Miss Granger? I do believe you should not be worrying about matters of international diplomacy," the professor's stern bun seemed to agree with her single raised eyebrow. "If you are interested, perhaps you should see to having your NEWTs first. "

"Professor, it's not that," Hermione shook her head. She took out the vinyl disc. "Can you transfigure a mechanical phonograph? I would like to hear the Song of Welcome my parents recorded for me. "

Professor Mcgonagall took the disc and examined the lettering on it with a wistful smile, "I remember my older days when this was all the rage. It's really too bad the muggles have replaced them all with electricity. "

She drew her wand, placed an empty cup in the center of the table, and with a word and a wand twirl, turned the cup into an old fashioned music player. The old wood, brass horn and the lever on a needle was like something out of a period film. With another flick, she had set the disc into the phonograph and animated the turntable.

If nothing else, the detailed and clearly mechanically complete device highlighted to Harry just how skilled his professor was. Judging from what he had seen at practice, Harry doubted even the seventh years and most of the professors would be able to do what she had just done so casually. He could see on Hermione's face that Professor Mcgonagall had regained whatever respect she might have lost earlier.

"Hello Hermione, if you're hearing this, that means our recording actually worked and you found a phonograph," came Hermione's parents' voices out of the player.

Malfoy snickered then paled as Professor Mcgonagall shot him a Look. He waved to his hanger ons and turned away, "come on, leave the muggles to their entertainment. "

Then the Song started and all noise and breakfast activity around them halted.

Twin voices of women started, sounding like clear bells on a calm summer's day. Then actual bells joined in, along with a calm flowing string melody. The Song quickened and a chorus added themselves to the melody. The Song was peace, the Song was hope, the Song was vision. The ending reduced back to the two lead voices, simple and innocent. It spoke of a future of peace and harmony, a little wish of a girl but no less important because of it.

When it ended, it seemed like the Great Hall was holding its breath. Even Malfoy was standing still, two steps away.

Ron broke the silence first. "Wow. That was amazing. "

Malfoy struggled with his expressions even as Crabbe and Goyle grunted in agreement. After a moment, he shook himself and stalked away, muttering under his breath as he went.

"That was not a mere song," Professor Mcgonagall had roused herself and looked as if she wanted to be suspicious of her own music player but couldn't quite muster the feeling. Hermione didn't reply, remaining completely still.

"Hermione?" Harry asked. He shook her shoulder and that snapped her out of whatever daze she was in.

Harry was understandably taken aback when, instead of talking, Hermione just blinked furiously, tears leaking down her face.

"They... the Cielans... peace. Their hope..." she said incoherently.

Professor Mcgonagall just put a steadying hand on her, "take some time to yourself before class, Miss Granger. The Song of Welcome is a magical one, it is not just sound. I suspect it also broadcasts emotions and the link between the disc and your parents allowed it to speak to you more clearly. "

Hermione sniffed her runny nose and wiped her face before visibly pulling herself together. "That was so beautiful," she muttered, then frowned, "but Professor, the disc was a recording of a recording. How can a spell be transferred through that? It's just a sound, right?"

Professor Mcgonagall sighed, "and spell incantations are just sounds too. Speech has a weight to it, one that very well trained wizards can feel. In ritual, songs can hold power all by themselves. I suspect this to be the case for the Tower's Song, it was a ritual meant to project emotion or understanding. The fact that it was played through a device made and run with magic will have amplified its effects, countering the falseness of the recording. I suspect muggles hearing this through muggle devices would not feel anything at all. They would be only affected at the actual singing itself. "

Indeed, Hermione soon confirmed her words by scanning through the muggle newspapers, some of which had noted the difference in reaction to the Song between the diplomats at the carrier and those who heard it later.

"I am very sorry Hermione," Professor Mcgonagall said sadly, "but I have to take this away. Flitwick and I will have to analyze this effect. "

Hermione just bowed her head, not noticing her favourite teacher had called her by name. "Will I get it back?" she asked timidly.

Professor Mcgonagall nodded, "if it is safe, yes. "

With that, their head of house levitated the transfigured record player and walked off.

As Ron and Hermione began to take up their argument about the Statute of Secrecy and the Tower's threat to it, Harry just wondered if these events would distract them from the Stone. Hagrid had dropped the final hint about Flamel's alchemy when Hermione pressed on the missing headmaster.

Dumbledore was never around any more, presumably off busy with the ICW. If someone wanted to make a run on the Stone, now would be the time.

* * *

Deep under the third floor corridor, in a room that still awaited the arrival of a certain mirror, a blood red stone sat in the middle of a seven fold sealing diagram. If Flamel had been around to hold his stone, he would have felt it vibrating in his hand, as if it was a sounding board for its own melody.

After all, there was now a source of power in range, far to the south. A source that Flamel had always had to substitute a ritual for.

The stone hummed to itself, quietly and inaudibly.


	7. Chapter 7 - Side Rachel

The light aircraft powered up with only a light hum of its electric engines. With a buzz, it zoomed off the launch rails and into the open air over the short cliff. In a few seconds, she was out over the ocean on the heading marked on the compass.

The question of whether a tiny craft like hers could reach the height of the floating continent was never in question. This plane would never reach ten kilometers in height.

But Rachel could get there anyway. What everyone was forgetting was that the weather conditions, and air and humidity at the floating continent was that of a low mountain, not high atmosphere. If her airplane hugged the sea surface until it was inside the radar disruption range, she would be able to slip past on a cloudy day and climb easily.

Right as the storm was worsening and everyone was watching the Cielans at Contact. Luckily, Rachel was good flyer, wilderness survivalist and had all sorts of supplies. She even knew basic Cielan and had the current dictionary.

This intrepid reporter would get the scoop of the century!

* * *

The light aircraft hung over the floating continent, serenely taking in the sights of the green land below. It studiously recorded everything in all directions with its cameras, ignoring the triumphant laughter echoing in its cockpit.

"I made it! Look at this, the continent must be almost half the size of California. There's forests, there's a mountain, there's even a lake! By the gods, how did these people get it up here?"

She gazed around with sparkling eyes, steering her plane studiously away from any Cielan aircraft or settlements. She wasn't about to get arrested without an on the ground report at least!

It was that action that spotted something rising out of the nearby mountain peak and heading her way. Whatever the dot was, wasn't an aircraft. Most aircraft didn't have flapping wings after all, yet it was way too big to be a bird.

She turned away but the dot just seemed to get closer. It was a bird after all. A huge bird at that. And it was faster than her!

"I hope the cameras caught it, this bird must be the size of dinosaurs!" she muttered for the benefit of the cameras as she tried to shake the approaching giant eagle. It looked sort of like an eagle.

"Look at that! The bird is keeping pace with my aircraft and seems to be-" Screech!

Her commentary was interrupted when the bird began to buffet her aircraft by flapping... gusts of wind at her? The ripples from the birds' wings was actually visible as thin green lines that tore into the fragile aircraft.

Oh no! Rachel fought the control stick as the aircraft began to list left and lose height. The bird screeched once more above her, victoriously, and mercifully decided to fly away.

It was a good five minutes of desperate flying as she tried to right the aircraft's tilt but she ran out of altitude first. At least the landing in the forest would be survivable, she wasn't even going that fast-

* * *

Rachel considered her options. Rifle and ammunition check, water filter bottle check, pistols, utility knife, rations, a sleeping bag, firestarter, all there. Her basic needs were fine. She wasn't even injured beyond a few scrapes that she had taken antibiotics for and sprayed antispectics on from her kit.

Temperature was a nice temperate 15 degrees celsius though the trees here looked like it was summer.

Next, her recorders. The two wings and the one nose cameras were all destroyed, though their memory cards had thankfully survived. Her digital camera and solar panel charger kit were all fine, so were the hundred or so memory cards to fill. Backup mechanical camera and rolls of film, also fine.

Needless to say, her aircraft was totaled.

Less optimally, the tiny inflatable raft and parachute were punctured, so there wasn't the option of parachuting off the side of the land with her basic survival kit and memory cards. She would eventually have to turn herself in to get back and hope the Cielans didn't confiscate her recordings. That meant not peeking around sensitive areas, but Rachel could live with that.

It looked like Plan B was a go! She just had to remember to shoot those birds with her hunting rifle before they got close. As well as not get turned away from the direction of the closest village she had seen. Rachel could tell her records would be well worth her time and trouble.

She had always liked to explore after all.

* * *

Nyo~?

Rachel stared at the fluffy... thing.

The animal sniffled around her legs curiously, looking nothing more like a small pig with a massive squirrelly tail hanging above it. In the tail was clutched a shiny green stone. The tail came up to Rachel's knees but the main body was only half that height. It was covered in a soft yellow fur with a strip of brown down its spine.

Nyo?

It made the same trill again and looked up at her inquisitively, as if begging for something. It was cute, but Rachel didn't know what the wildlife here was like.

"It seems the local wildlife has taken an interest in me," Rachel said, following the actions of the animal with her camera as it ignored her words and sniffed at her trousers again, "I wonder if they're just curious? This species seem to be unafraid of humans, they're almost as friendly as my housecat. "

Nyo...

The animal looked up at her and begged again. Strangely, she felt as if she should feed it. Rachel paused, shrugged and took out a candy bar from her pocket. Breaking off a small piece, she held it out on her hand for it to sniff at.

It licked the chocolate once then suddenly pounced at the candy, even putting two forelegs into her hand to wolf down the treat. Rachel laughed. What a golden opportunity! It was cute and PR friendly.

Nyo! Nyo! Nyo?

The animal licked her palm clean with its surprisingly smooth tongue then glanced up at her again. It sniffed and followed the scrape on her arm, or perhaps just the scent of the antisceptics underneath the white gauze. If she didn't know better, Rachel would have thought it was confused.

Then it shook itself, unfurled its tail to reveal that the gem was physically attached. And the tail was very very long. Long enough to reach her waist.

Nyo!

With a cry, the gem lit up green and shot sparkles at Rachel's arm. She jerked back but not in time to avoid the stream of green light. Soothing waves of warmth shot up her arm from where the light hit her.

...

She stared at the most valuable animal in the world as it sniffed at her again and begged for another treat. Her arm didn't hurt any more. Rachel gingerly unwrapped the rest of the candy bar and set it on the forest floor for the animal to eat, while she peeled off the gauze and tape to reveal perfectly smooth and undamaged skin.

"Wow. That animal... just healed me! Just like that!" Rachel was aware that her commentary was less than ideal for her recording camera, but she was testing out her arm's range of motions to find not a single trace of pain remaining.

Holy shit. This was going to make waves.

Her records were going to be worth millions.


	8. Chapter 8 - Side Rachel 2

Trudging through the light forest was mostly boring, Rachel was used to that however.

The nyo, as she decided to call it after its cry, curled up in her arms in a blanket was not boring, however. The little animal was still a wondrous mystery even after observing it for hours.

Docile enough towards humans, the nyo did not protest her picking it up once she enticed it into her spare blanket. Nights would get cold without using it for fear of fleas but Rachel would bear her hardship gladly if it kept the nyo by her side.

Bribes of biscuits and water had been sufficient to get the nyo to heal Rachel's other scrapes and that alone had been worth the food and trouble. Its cuteness in her recordings was worth far more.

The nyo purred gently against her chest and Rachel smiled down at it. Perhaps this one might want to come back with her if the Cielans would allow it. Having an alien exotic pet might be interesting if it turned out to be disease free.

Her musings were abruptly cut off when the undergrowth to the front rustled. The bush was about waist height and the rustle seemed to indicate whatever caused the disturbance was big. Possibly dog sized or larger.

Palming her gun, Rachel slowly let the nyo down. It shook itself awake and yawned cutely.

The animalistic growl coming from the bush made the nyo scamper off into the forest without a single glance back. Rachel decided to heed its behaviour and took a few steps back. Had she stepped into the domain or nest of some predator?

The question was answered as a flash of blue darted out of the bush and leapt at her face.

Rachel's gun barked once then twice as her hands snapped up almost without thinking. The blue blur shot past her as she dived to the side and rolled to face the... wolf? The animal whined as it scrambled to its feet and checked itself before snarling up at her again.

It looked like a wolf with blue fur.

And more importantly, no wounds.

Rachel winced as the wolf eyed her warily but eventually decided to pounce again. Her pistol cracked twice again, hitting it in the body and the head. Instead of the spray of blood she expected from gunshots, the high caliber bullets seemed to whiz straight through the animal!

In fact, as the blue wolf was blown backwards much further than two bullets had any right to do, Rachel could see two bullets drop out of the air where she had hit it mid-jump.

It shook itself and scrambled to its feet, dried leaves sticking to its fur. No blood or wounds.

What was with this continent? First she ran into a small furry squirrel that could heal wounds and now she was fighting for her life against a wolf that was immune to bullets.

Rachel unslung the rifle from her back with one hand while the wolf was still making sure it was unharmed. Perhaps a hunting rifle would work?

Probably not.

* * *

Tuata and his partner reyvateil, Nema, were on a standard patrol near Cello Forest when he heard a muffled crack in the distance. Nema looked up towards the source.

Gunfire. And not really far away.

He unsheathed his sword and nodded to Nema, "we'll investigate. Stay behind me. "

A light hum resonated in his heart as the tension raised without him needing to spell it out. Nema had been his partner for years now and they understood each other easily.

Harmonics protected them both as Tuata crashed through the undergrowth. Branches and bushes whipped at them but bounced off his church-issued armour. They wouldn't even reach Nema through her thin robe that would normally not provide protection, instead sliding off her skin or clothes without catching.

It bled their harmonics field and cost both of them stamina but there could be someone needing their help. Cello forest was not friendly to civilian travellers, as most did not carry around missiles or any elemental attack methods, guns were usually sufficient for self-defence but not when this was the habitat of the blue wolves. Wolves that could phase partially out of reality to disperse the energy of physical hits required more than just normal weapons.

Guided by the occasional gunfire, they burst onto a small trail to find a strangely dressed woman blasting away with a rifle at a blue wolf.

"Get behind me!" Tuata shouted at the woman, "Nema! Fire Shield!"

Nema nodded and began to sing, the song magic resonated in their harmonics. Protection from heat, and with the install, also added a heat coat to his weapons; a preparation she had made for this patrol. Rather than take her place in front of Nema, like any civilian would know to do, the woman moved to the side away from them.

Clicking his tongue in exasperation at the stupid civilian, Tuata sized up the blue wolf. It was a young adult, bright and energetic. It had probably thought the woman would be prey, especially after she had failed to damage it. Still, no songstones or other surprises were visible on it, Tuata just had to hope it was a normal specimen.

The wolf scrambled to its feet, recovering from the woman's last shot, right as Tuata charged at it with blade drawn. The heat haze around his sword burned into the coat even as Tuata's sword slashed through it.

The wolf dodged back from the dangerous weapon, taking the hit on its flank. A dangerous but not fatal wound. Then instead of running away or going after him, the blue wolf ran around, heading straight to Nema. Who was too busy singing to notice.

"Nema!" Tuata shouted as he tried to give chase. Protecting his reyvateil was hard enough but he wanted to pin the wolf in case it went after the civilian. But the wolf was faster than normal and Tuata couldn't reach it-

There was a crack from the civilian's rifle, the fire coated bullet was a streak of red that pierced into the wolf's belly, throwing it down to the floor and dealing yet more damage. It wouldn't survive that shot but Tuata would take no chances. He didn't slacken his sprint until he reached the downed scrabbling wolf and his sword had chopped its head off.

The harmonics around them died down to its quiescent mode as Nema opened her eyes and smiled at him gratefully.

"Nema, are you all right?"

She smiled back as Tuata checked her for wounds. He didn't find any. "I'm fine, Tuata. Thank you for protecting me again. "

Good. Now then.

"What were you thinking!?" He turned to the civilian, who was watching them wide-eyed. "You should know that you are supposed to protect the reyvateil! And coming into Cello Forest without bringing a flame weapon? Are you looking to feed the wolves?"

"Not fighter!" the woman said, raising her hands and letting her rifle fall on its straps. "Do not have flame weapon. Reyvateil? Do not understand. "

Her broken speech brought Tuata up short. She even tended to drop her pronouns and speak with weird grammar but to not understand the word 'reyvateil'? That was impossible. Did she come from some isolated village that had lost contact with the Tower's nations?

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Town, that way," the woman pointed.

Nema had already taken out her map and nodded, "that's towards Karulu Village. "

Tuata frowned. "I'll report this to the squad leader and we'll escort her there," he decided eventually. In any case, he wouldn't be able to leave a civilian with no heat weapons alone in Cello Forest so his patrol was canceled by her mere presence. Nodding at his decision, Tuata booted his grathnet communicator.

In the mean time, Nema could find out where she had come from and try to fix her horrendous accent.

* * *

The moment the woman explained she was from Earth, Tuata had to call his superior again. Then his superior called the next one up the chain and it kept going.

Which was how he now had Eolia, one of the Trio of Elemia herself, on his communicator.

"Feeling impatience I ask, is the woman a danger?" the Origin reyvateil asked him in hymmnos.

Tuata had of course studied the language as all Church Knights tried to but his reply was much less eloquent. Not many humans could match a reyvateil's instinctive understanding of the language. "Feeling confident I reply, she claims to be civilian. Weapons are weak. Asks many questions. "

Rachel was talking to Nema, asking her questions about singing in broken Cielan. Nema tried to answer without dodging the question and without giving away secrets about song magic. It was more difficult than she expected, Rachel was perceptive and latched onto any little detail Nema leaked unintentionally.

In the few minutes where Leard and Shurelia probed for descriptions of Rachel's items, Nema had already unwittingly given away that her song magic could both attack, defend and heal.

"In that case, you may proceed as Radolf told you," Shurelia said, now in Cielan. "You, Tuata, are to protect Rachel and give her a tour of Karulu Village. Avoid giving details about weapons or Song Magic but other than that, please ensure she gets an understanding of daily life. A squad from Tenba will arrive there tomorrow and you can pass her to them. "

Tuata nodded. This wasn't anything he couldn't do. "I will do my best," he replied, ending the communication.

"Allow us to lead you to Karulu Village," he said to Rachel.

She smiled and held up a hand, "wait a while. Look for a pet. "

Rachel dug around in her pockets as Tuata and Nema watched on dumbfoundedly. She eventually dug out a roll of biscuits and a half empty bottle of water. "Nyo? Nyo?"

Tuata could feel his eye twitch. Surely it was just a coincidence-

A yellow blob shot out of the undergrowth and chirped excitedly at Rachel's feet.

"That's a monster! Get back!" He shouted as he scrambled to draw his sword. Nyos were more pests than monsters but they could still do damage, especially to an unwary unarmoured civlian.

"What?" Rachel shot him a confused look, absentmindedly holding out a biscuit for the Nyo. It grabbed the treat greedily from her hand and chowed down on it. "Is very tame, likes people, healed wounds for food. "

"Yeah, Nyos will do that, but they're also easy to anger and can seriously injure you. Once it expects you to feed it, stopping will make it angry. " Tuata explained with a sigh. The main reason why Nyos were considered pests and monsters rather than pets, even though the occasional child still managed to befriend one every now and then. It did not usually end well for the child.

Rachel did not seem to care about his warning, "is no problem. Have food, will feed. Can buy at village?"

And his orders were to take care of her while keeping her happy. Not ten seconds in and he was already beginning to regret it. Tuata sighed, "yes, you can buy food at Karulu. Fine, bring it along. "

* * *

Karulu Village was a sleepy farming village with only a small grathmelding workshop to support the town. Mines, logging and farming were its main economic activity and the regular afternoon bustle of returning workers made it lively.

Tuata led Rachel around, pointing out the various shops, the main square and even a short tour of the currently empty airfield.

Rachel, for her part, buzzed around taking video, pictures and interviewing many of the locals about how they lived, what food was available and so on, who bore her curiousity with good cheer. Her visit to the grathmelding store at the top of the huge pillar let her trade some of her strange devices and food that piqued the old Professor Pochoma's interest for grathmelding, though the biggest sale was the materials from her crashed aircraft.

The ensuing impromptu grathmelding lesson and Rachel's endless excitement about the process may have been gratifying to the old man but Tuata was simply getting tired.

"The grathmelding won't work once you leave," Tuata warned her over dinner.

Rachel, having paid for the inn with the leaf she had obtained, just shrugged, "good experience. Interesting story. "

Well all right then. If she was just going to play wide-eyed tourist, Tuata would make sure she stuck to the safe areas and didn't see anything too disagreeable.

It was only in review later that night that Rachel found out her videos were all fuzzy and full of static from the magical interference of the Tower. Her pictures and audio could still be seen but it looked like video was right out for the rest of the trip. She would have to use her manual film camera for the best shots, hopefully she could grathmeld something easy tomorrow and get pictures of the process.

The next day, with the little bit of leaf from her trade, Rachel proceeded to buy general information like children's storybooks, school textbooks and the occasional curiosity. Along with bulk food for feeding her Nyo. Her shopping trip was then cut short with the arrival of the Tenba airship in Karulu and Tuata finally breathed a sigh of relief when the Earthling was out of his hands.

* * *

"Was it all right, letting that tourist do that?" Leard asked.

Shurelia leaned back in the comfy chair in the Platina meeting room. The transfer team made up of all the leaders of the cities had stepped down to receiving daily updates, but Shurelia and Leard maintained their presence in the SPU command center, being close by. Frelia sat in sometimes when the local governments wanted to talk formally.

"It is all part of the plan we agreed on. While unexpectedly fast, this Rachel can help provide Earth with a better understanding of how we live. That we are just as human as they are. "

"But if they know about us and we don't know about them, we will be disadvantaged in the trade negotiations," Leard pointed out.

"Ayano had an idea about that. Our embassy efforts to the United States and United Kingdom will come with a request for us to have a Tenba reporter go around their society just like Rachel has with us. In exchange for overlooking Rachel's border violation. She thinks they will agree, and we will have officially sanctioned media efforts while they just get whatever Rachel can find out," Shurelia sighed. She didn't like these sorts of veiled political threats. There was no way she would allow Rachel to be seriously hurt or detained as an indefinite 'guest'. Even if relations broke down, the reporter was just a civilian. At worst, they would fly her back to the nearest Earth city after confiscating everything except her personal items.


	9. Chapter 9 - Ar Tonelico

"This language makes no sense. "

"Hey, Lyner, don't complain. If we're going to go on this mission, you need to learn English. "

Aurica sighed as Misha admonished Lyner for complaining. Sometimes she was envious of how the two of them retained their childhood friend attitude to each other, even if Lyner barely remembered his time with Misha as children. Misha had no problem with scolding Lyner and being pushy.

Though even if Lyner complained, he was still studying. And this language was really inconsistent. All the rules seemed to have some exceptions that just needed to be memorized.

As a reyvateil, she was trying to approach the language by hearing its poetry. The words flowed less well than hymmos but they did have their own rhythm.

Being assigned to an embassy mission to the Earth country of England was something Aurica would never have thought she could do. But in the few years after meeting Lyner, Aurica could finally admit to herself that she was a decently powerful reyvateil. Going from a class D to someone who could channel a Tower Connection in such a short time had left her self-esteem playing catch up for some time.

It was something of a shock to find out that nearly everyone in Sol Ciel knew her name. Both as a result of her actions with the Mir incident and with her defence of the Symphonic Linker engineering teams from the Sea of Death.

She sighed and looked down at the compiled English language primer. One month left before the mission to England.

* * *

"What in the world could that be?"

Turing gnawed on a chapati his wife packed into his lunchbox. Despite being named for the famous British mathematician, Turing had disappointed his entire family by ending up a physicist.

Never mind that physics these days was all math.

The arrival of the Tower was all anyone could talk about. Even his colleagues in the university department constantly speculated on the mechanism that kept the Tower standing or the weather manipulation.

It made figuring out what was going on with Turing's small particle accelerator difficult. The department researchers consulted with each other on problems regularly, if only to gain a fresh perspective. But it was all Tower Tower Tower for the last month.

The detector was showing electromagnetic interference. Turing had replaced his Faraday cage three times, used a new QCCD out of the box and even borrowed a photon counter from next door. No go. The damned photons seemed to be coming from nowhere.

The weirdest part was how when Turing had shifted his detector to next door's setup, in desperation, his QCCD was working perfectly. And the pattern of the photons in his radiation shielded lab, the energy distribution, appeared to be the same regardless of which detector model he used. Implying that he was seeing something real, not just an artifact of his power source.

It was enough to make his PhD student joke that the lab was haunted and the detectors were seeing a ghost.

"Michael? Have we tried to see if we can make the detector blind?"

His PhD student shouted back from his desk, "I tried that last week! The photons can go through the detector cover!"

Turing sighed, this was going to go down into the annals of lunchtime jokes. He was going to find some forgotten factor way too late to salvage his reputation.

"Enough, take a break today, Michael," Turing said as he left his office.

"Professor?" his student looked up and paused as he no doubt saw Turing's tiredness. "All right, I'll see you tomorrow. "

"You've any plans for this afternoon?" he asked idly.

Michael shrugged, "I'll finish reading this paper then go help my friend. She's in the geology department across the road and she wants my help with this crazy tenured professor who thinks his stones are singing. "

Turing laughed a little and left for home, feeling a little better.

* * *

Michael stood in the geology building, wondering just how someone could so precisely fit the mad scientist mold. Tanya's professor, Yomur, had a shocking head of white hair that seemed to perpetually suffer from bed head. His old eyes still contained the spark of mad curiousity and his excited gestures completed the picture of an absentminded professor.

That the man was approaching seventy years old and was known as the geology department's fossil did not help Michael think any better of him.

"Are you sure this professor is... uh..." he tried to find a diplomatic way to put it.

Tanya grinned mischievously, "batty? Sure, he's completely off his rockers but he knows his stones like nobody else. He's practically a fossilized rock himself! Just do me a favour and listen to him, all right?"

She batted her eyes at Michael, probably knowing just what she did to the butterflies in his stomach.

"Fine," Michael said. Like every other time, he just couldn't resist that look.

The little vixen led him down the geology labs to the professor's office. "Now, he might be a little strange but please don't dismiss him outright. "

Tanya's repeated warnings was only making Michael doubt the man more but he gestured for her to get it over with.

Without bothering to knock, Tanya just pushed the door open. Inside, every wall of the office was lined with glass covered shelves, and all of the space on them covered with a bewildering variety of rock. Each sample was labeled and in its own box, to Michael's relief, though the order by which the rocks were arranged was not obvious.

The man himself however was pacing in front of his desk, tapping a strange contraption with a tuning fork.

Clamped into a holder was a piece of rock. A microphone wire was held very close to it. Said microphone was hooked up to an amplifier and a speaker, but weirdly, the microphone itself was facing away from the whole setup, leaving only it's cord wrapped in coils near the stone in the apparatus. Since the microphone was the directional sort, almost none of the tuning fork's sound would even be picked up. And even then, Michael could see the red light showing the microphone was muted.

Yomur did not even look up as Tanya shuffled Michael in, he simply selected a tuning fork from the collection of notes and tapped it against the metal stand before holding it near the stone.

Nothing unexpected happened.

"Um-"

"Sh!"

The man held up an admonishing finger. Michael quietly shut the door and watched as the professor moved the ringing tuning fork around the stone for a few passes. He gave up after a few seconds and silenced it with a cloth before turning the amplifier down to nothing.

"Ah, there you are, Tanya," Yomur said finally, "did you find a physicist like you said you would?"

Michael felt his eye twitch but suppressed his annoyance. "Sir, I'm Michael, I'm a PhD student over at the physics department. Do you mind explaining what is going on here?"

The professor looked at him with beady eyes for a moment before nodded. "This here is the control experiment. That is a piece of granite. As you can see, nothing happens. But..."

He dragged over a different holder with an off-white rock in it, "these rocks, an almagation of three related species, sing back. "

Yomur took up the tuning fork set apart from the others and rang it against the metal frame. Immediately the rock seemed to vibrate in resonance with the tuning fork. Reaching over to the amplifier, Yomur turned up volume until there was an audible white noise. When the tuning fork was brought close to the white rock and its vibration increased, so did the noise from the speaker.

"What do you make of that?" the professor asked him after silencing the tuning fork and turning off all the audio equipment.

To be honest, Michael had no idea what to think. The microphone coils and the white noise reminded him of headphones receiving strange noises before a mobile phone rang nearby. "What if you move the microphone nearer to the rock?" he suggested, and immediately regretted making a ridiculous hypothesis.

It was just a rock after all. Unless there was some white noise generator powered by tuning forks in play, Michael could see no reason why that might even work. Plus the control experiment neatly disproved any tuning fork shenanigans-

His train of thought screeched to a final crashing halt as Yomur, having moved the microphone closer, struck the rock. The speaker squealed with a massive overload of white noise that nearly blasted Michael's eardrums apart.

A hasty unplugging of the speaker later, Michael winced as he clutched his hurting ears. "Let's not do that again. "

The professor nodded, Tanya next to him.

"So I'm guessing you've narrowed the effect down to the rock?" Michael asked.

Tanya shrugged, "the microphone is new. But I was asked to examine the rock's resonance with sound in all the other labs in this building. The strangest part is that the professor has had this rock in his office for years, this collection is nearly a decade old. And in all his humming and singing, the rock has never sung back like this. "

And the rock was generating radio interference when it vibrated. The transistors in the microphone was picking it up and sending the noise to the speakers.

And the rock had not started to hum until recently.

"How recent was this?" Michael asked again.

Yomur frowned and tried to plumb his aging memory. "I first noticed this about three weeks ago," he said finally.

So, only after the Tower arrived, which also projected a huge and impossible field of electromagnetic interference.

Plus the Song of Welcome had caused radar interference. Even in the carrier's radar set that had been retracted and inside a faraday cage.

Just like how a certain photon detector seemed to see an increase in background radiation inside a faraday cage that was next to a stone radiation shield that wasn't regulation concrete but natural stone. Inherited from the previous owners of the lab and without any documentation of where it had come from or what it was made of.

Michael frowned. But that was ridiculous. Right?

Well, singing rocks were weird enough and it wasn't as if he had any plans this afternoon. Tanya's eyes were definitely not affecting his willingness to try off the wall ideas.

"Do you think I could borrow your set up?" he looked at Yomur then to Tanya, "I want to know if I have a singing rock as well. "

* * *

Aurica glanced out of the window of the private jet on loan from the British government. A deceptively flat blue sea looked back up at her from below.

This whole planet was like a paradise. No Sea of Death, no Blastline, nothing to stop the people from reaching to wherever they wanted to go. The natives here had even managed to reach their moon!

Aurica smiled to herself as she thought of the sacrifices the Tenba engineers had made to create the Symphonic Linker. All those people dying a slow death to the Sea of Death's poison, even when under Aurica's Song Magic shield. Perhaps, in time, she could come to believe that their effort was worth the price. But a month since the Transition was not enough time for her to put her grief aside.

For the first time in her entire life, Aurica felt that a hope for the future was possible. True hope, not just for a better life for oneself, but for the world as whole.

"Hey, what are you looking at?"

Aurica turned to Lyner and patted him on the shoulder, "let's not get distracted now, Lyner. English won't wait for you. "

Her sweet smile was the only reply to his exaggerated pout.

* * *

Lyner was the leader for this mission, Aurica and Misha were here as song magic backup, with Krushe in charge of engineering support.

It was almost like having the old team back again. Shurelia couldn't come of course and Jack was off doing something in Europe. Radolf was too busy escorting the British embassy in Nemo. And... okay, so half the team then.

He walked down the street towards where the Ar Cielan office was going to be. Just a small space in the city for now, housing only him and his team. They were escorted by the British minister for foreign affairs and two police officers. Given that Lyner was armed with a sword and Krushe with a variety of small guns, it made sense that they couldn't go anywhere without law enforcement. Also that the British would want to keep their civilians from harassing the Cielan party.

That said, this state of affairs would make things difficult for Lyner's real mission. The H-wave detector that Krushe was still fiddling with while walking was the real purpose, finding these local magic users and establishing contact. Only the highest levels of the British and American governments were aware of this effort and had communicated such to the hidden magical society but no attempts at contact had come from Tom's people.

Like Croix, Lyner's success made him a problem solver for Incidents. Croix and his team was off to the American continent on a similar mission.

The extent of the help the British could give was to make the Cielan's office somewhere on Charing Cross Road. On the busy street, Lyner's group was attracting stares and pictures, to which Aurica shied away from and Misha happily returned with waves and smiles. The British minister, by the name of Patrick, also kept up a continuous commentary about the goods and services on offer, the transport vehicles and culturally important buildings. Just like on the Tower, it seemed like the human race shared a common tendency to leave behind legacies for later generations.

"Indeed, these cars do occasionally suffer from accidents by inattentive drivers, by exceeding speed limits and other safety rules, but the risk is acceptable," the minister Patrick replied to Krushe, "getting from place to place quickly is very important, cars are as important to us as airships are to you. "

Krushe nodded back. "Indeed, airships also suffer accidents. It's just that I'm seeing the cars on this road are going quite fast for such a cluttered environment. There's so many things to hit. You must have accidents quite often. "

"Indeed, in the city of London, accidents happen daily. We have the fire department and the ambulance services to clear the road quickly and treat the injuries. Speaking of cars, I hear lady Krushe is good with machines. If you would like a car to examine yourself, you can easily find a car dealer in London to sell you one. The office building comes with a carpark I believe. "

She was about to reply when a beeping came from the square pad in her hand, bringing the entire team to a halt. Two of the bars on it was flashing while the rest stayed below threshold.

"H-wave detector pinged something," Krushe muttered as everyone looked at her. She fiddled with the settings and waved the detector about, "definitely a hit. It's somewhere close by. The drop in power by distance is very steep. "

All the three British in their party looked confused while Aurica and Misha started looking around. Nothing immediately magical was visible though telling what was supposed to be present in an unfamiliar environment was difficult at best.

Lyner smiled at him, "it's nothing to worry about. Your prime minister asked us to scan for H-waves in your city, it's something of a special task. "

Were they going to buy it? No, they were not going to buy it.

"I would like to know what a H-wave is?" Patrick asked.

"H-waves are signals emitted from a person's body to create various effects. You are familiar with the Song of Welcome?" Lyner waited for Patrick to nod, stalling for time as Krushe tried to narrow down the signal, "that was a Song Magic meant to communicate the feelings of the singers. Aurica and Misha here can use their dynamic H-waves to communicate with the Tower in order to use Song Magic. "

Patrick was immediately interested, as all the natives were whenever Song Magic came up as a topic. They didn't appear to have any H-wave technology or abilities, outside of the hidden Teru-like magic users.

"So you're saying someone in London is using Song Magic-"

"Not necessarily," Krushe interrupted him, "H-waves can be used in many ways and Song Magic is just one of them. My device is showing that it isn't Song Magic actually, too few frequencies. It's over there by that..."

She trailed off and look confused. Lyner waved a hand at her, "continue?"

"It's over there," Krushe said after a short struggle. She pointed at...

What was he doing again? Looking for the H-waves or going to the Cielan office? Lyner frowned as his train of thought derailed itself.

"Lyner?" Aurica asked worriedly. He blinked and looked around, everyone else in the party other than Aurica had looked at whatever Krushe was pointing at and just gotten confused. Lyner felt as if he was supposed to be doing something else important but this was the only important thing he was supposed to be doing.

Aurica frowned then gasped, "Lyner! Mind affecting H-waves! _Concentrating greatly, I sing for your sake_!"

The first notes of Aurica's Defender Song Magic flared out, far weaker than normal, and the Song manifestation was also building slower. This far from the Tower, they only had about half the usual power but that was enough for Aurica to project Harmonics, reinforced by the Defender Song Magic. A skin tight force field snapped into place around the entire party, including the three British.

Almost immediately, the pub that Krushe was pointing to became possible to look at. It was less than ten steps away. Previously it was something that his eyes just skipped over and Lyner's persistence at looking at it was triggering some attention deflecting effect. Subtle and effective, but not something that could go through a full spectrum shield like Harmonics.

Everyone in the street had stopped to listen, point and take even more pictures. Aurica's Song was loud and the instrumental accompaniment was drawing attention. None of that attention from all the passersby was directed at the mysterious pub.

"We should investigate the pub. That's part of the task we were given. " Lyner said.

Patrick looked conflicted. It seemed that the man had worked out what exactly was going on with the pub's magic and he was definitely annoyed and curious, but also wanted to keep Lyner's party out of trouble.

"We'll be fine," Lyner grinned, "we expected to get into strange situations. That's why I'm here and not Ayano from Tenba. I'm the problem solver after all. "

He waved for Aurica to stop her Song. As she cut off her singing, the extra layer of physical force field died away but Harmonics remained humming close to their skin.

"This is a strange situation," Patrick said, examining the effect Harmonics had on his skin. It blocked damage from going lower than the skin, retreating deeper towards vital organs as its power failed under attack. For now, the fresh shield prevent the British minister from even pinching his skin. "I'm not sure an embassy mission should be doing this," he added. The two policemen also looked as if they had no idea what to do.

"That's what you get for sticking with Lyner," Krushe quipped, "strange incidents and Lyner are like two lovebirds. Just be glad you're not a reyvateil or he'll add you to his harem. "

Patrick glanced at Lyner, then to each of the three girls, ending on Krushe.

"Oh no, I'm not part of that mess," Krushe shook her head, "I'm not a reyvateil-"

Lyner fixed a grin to his face and spoke over Krushe, "shall we go in? Aurica, keep Harmonics up and follow me. Krushe and Misha, cover my back and support. "

* * *

 _A/N: Why yes, that is indeed a Songstone..._


	10. Chapter 10 - HP

ANs:

 _Harry is quieter but acts more decisively when needed_

 _Ron is more perceptive_

 _Voldemort did not realize who the three of them were_

* * *

"And to think we were looking in the wrong book all this time!" Hermione threw her hands up in the air. Quietly, in case Madam Pince heard them.

Two days after the incident with the Song, Harry told her about wheedling the identity of the Alchemist's Stone out of Hagrid.

Hermione responded in her own fashion by berating herself for not having thought of it and started researching everything she could about a famous artifact.

"And it says here that Flamel conducted a controversial ritual by duping a bunch of muggles to sing the ritual words with him. More than just a threat to the Statute, the ritual itself was said to have been inspired in Flamel by a passing song and to this day, almost no one understands it. The Stone is able to transmute lead into gold as well as create Elixir of Life which allows the drinker to remain young and live forever! Of course Snape wants the Stone, who wouldn't want the Alchemist's Stone?!" Hermione huffed as she pushed the heavy book to Harry and Ron who were looking at the heavily cursive words with a skeptical eye. "I knew Flamel's name was familiar, I just don't recall where I saw it before..."

As his friend scowled to herself, Harry glanced over the page. He wondered how long until their obviously evil potions professor would make another attempt. Professor Dumbledore was barely around, he often took a hurried breakfast early before running off on other business. The school was practically run by Professor McGonagall now.

"Um, Hermione," Ron's voice pulled Harry out of his dark musings. The two friends look at him, and the small chocolate frog card resting in his open hand. Unusually for Ron, he looked a little sheepish.

"That's a Dumbledore card," Harry pointed out, recognizing the bearded old man winking at him from the cover, "like the one you gave me on the train..."

"-famous for the work on the uses of dragon blood with alchemist Nicholas Flamel! It was right in front of me all this time?!" Hermione's voice edged upwards as she nearly exploded in self-directed frustration.

Harry hid a wince as Ron clapped a hand over her mouth. Her voice had started to sound a bit too much like Petunia on a bad day. And it wasn't just him who had a shock, judging from the clatter of falling books on the shelf behind them.

He glanced around to see Hagrid standing amidst a fallen pile of books, a broken book holder in his hands.

Hermione groaned when she saw Madam Pince bearing down on them with the wrath of Merlin on her face.

* * *

Hagrid shuffled guiltily as he was pinned by the flat stares of a certain trio of first years.

"Uh, sorry 'bout that," he shuffled backwards towards the sweet freedom promised by the central staircase.

Ron cracked first, mouth twitching with mirth, before they all broke down into chuckles.

"So Hagrid, it's rare to see you in the library," Hermione nodded at the large man after their laughter died down, "what have you got there?"

The amusement died a swift and possibly fiery death when Hagrid, instead of explaining, just looked guilty again. "It's nothing much, just a book on raising dragons. You know, for my interests. " His words did not inspire confidence in Harry, much less Hermione.

"Hagrid, why do you need a book on raising dragons? You don't... actually have, a dragon. Do you?"

He just looked away from Hermione's questions.

"Hagrid! You know dragon raising is illegal without a license!" Hermione almost screamed again and this time it was up to Harry to shush her. "And Hagrid, you live in wooden house!"

"Oh nonsense, it's perfectly safe, it's just an egg," the man waved her off gruffly, "I can take care of it just fine. "

"What is this about an egg?"

The dreaded voice made Harry's stomach drop into his feet.

"Professor McGonagall," Hermione greeted their teacher automatically and then froze.

"Hagrid?" the stern Transfiguration teacher might as well have turned the larger man into stone with her unamused glare. From the look on her face, they all knew the game was up. Harry was half relieved that his favourite giant of a man would not be injured doing something extremely foolish but at the same time, the promise of grave punishments in Professor McGonagall's eye did not bode well for Hagrid.

"How did Hagrid get a dragon's egg anyway?" Ron asked, "it's not like you can just buy these things from random people in a bar. "

Hagrid gave a weak chuckle, "funny story that. I played cards for it with this man. In a bar, too. Funny guy all wrapped up, but you get all sorts down in-"

To Harry's quiet amazement, Professor McGonagall let Hagrid tell the story. And unlike when he was trying to wheedle information out of Hagrid, the Professor merely had to quirk eyebrows or tap a foot to get Hagrid to yield more information. Ron was also paying attention, a frown on his face.

"Did the man want anything before just giving you a dragon egg for a game of cards?" Ron asked when Hagrid wound down.

"Not really, I think he was just a good guy. Wanted to find a home for the poor dragon he found and all. Even asked if I could take care of it properly. Of course convincing him wasn't a problem, all you need to know about creatures is how to handle them, like Fluffy, just sing to him and he goes right... to... sleep..."

From how Hagrid's face suddenly paled and the thunderous expression on his professor's face, Harry did not need to ask to know Hagrid had indeed just told whoever that mysterious man was, how to get past the three headed dog.

Ron asked anyway, "is that you telling us or did you tell the man-"

The audible gulp was confirmation enough.

"Professor, Snape is trying to get the Stone!" Hermione whirled to face Professor McGonagall, "and now he knows how to get past the cerberus and- and-"

"Calm down, Miss Granger," the professor steadied Hermione with a hand on her shoulder, "I can assure you that Snape is perfectly trustworthy. More important, is how the three of you managed to find out what is beyond the third floor corridor. Though I think I know the answer to that. Yes, Hagrid? I don't know why Professor Dumbledore would have told you what was beyond the corridor. But no matter. "

She continued with a sigh, "the three of you are not to speak of the item being guarded. Rest assured that the protections are strong and secure. Despite your misadventures-"

"Professor, I think it would be better to check the corridor. Just in case," Ron interrupted her. "Whoever gave Hagrid the dragon might have intended it as a distraction whenever the egg hatches. But now... Dumbledore's never around and, how long ago did you get the egg, Hagrid?"

The big man shrugged, "it was yesterday evening. I came up here the moment the library was opened to see how to care for it, you know. "

"Then since Professor Dumbledore was here for dinner yesterday and breakfast today, whoever is going after the Stone has had nearly three hours to work through the protections," Ron spoke in a distant thinking tone that he had only ever used when destroying a strong opponent at wizarding chess.

Harry was finding that he had to change his opinion of Ron in the last few days. His friend was still impulsive and lazy but he hid an intelligent mind behind that shell. In a flash, Harry wondered what Ron might be like a few years older.

"Very well," Professor McGonagall huffed, "I will check on the protections. Hagrid, please see that these three children are returned to the Gryffindor dorms and to stay there-"

And now it was time for him to act.

"I will go with you, Professor. " Right after the disastrous quidditch match when Snape had made an attempt on his life, Harry had decided that he could not simply rely on others to keep him safe. Harry had never told anyone, not even his friends. But right now, he had to make a stand.

It seemed like today was a day where he had to reassess everyone. Professor McGonagall, instead of instantly sending Harry back to his room like an unruly child, stopped to smile faintly. For a moment Professor McGonagall looked every year of her age. "I remember when there was another boy in this school just like you. I never could keep him and his friends out of trouble and it looks like you are just the same. You wouldn't stay behind even if I told you to, would you? Very well, Mister Potter, come along, but no further than to confirm no one has disturbed the cerberus. Hagrid, please inform Professor Sprout that I am about to investigate the third floor corridor. "

Hagrid nodded and his heavy footfalls led off to the staircases.

Harry turned to Hermione and Ron. Before he could open his mouth both of them immediately interrupted him. "Don't even think about it. " "You'll need someone to watch your back. "

He grinned back and hurried to follow Professor McGonagall to the third floor corridor.

* * *

They arrived to find Fluffy's door hanging ajar, the soft sounds of a harp playing over the louder triple snores of Fluffy. Harry nudged a horrified Hermione with his elbow, waving his wand meaningfully. Ron already had his out and she drew hers with quietly shaking hands.

Professor McGonagall cursed under her breath, "we just tripped a ward. "

The professor pushed open the door carefully, wand held at the ready. Then she straightened and rushed into the room.

"Professor Quirrel, are you alright?" she asked, checking over the turbaned professor. The DADA teacher sitting against the wall, with flecks of blood leaking from his mouth, couldn't even open his eyes as he lifted his head.

"P-p-professor M-m-mc, S-s-snape is after the- the-" he stuttered falteringly.

"Hush, we'll get help," the transfiguration professor tried to help Quirrel to his feet but the man hissed in pain.

"S-s-stone... first," he pushed McGonagall's hands away.

Professor McGonagall nodded, looked around the room once and snapped out a series of orders. "Hermione, can you sustain a transfiguration? Keep the harp playing. Ronald and Harry, levitate the professor and help him to the infirmary, the two of you should be able to lift him together if you can use a troll's club. Once they are out of the room, Hermione, get Madam Pomfrey immediately. "

She muttered, "and I will go after Snape. "

They leapt into action as the professor twirled her wand with an "Expecto Patronum", summoned a glowing silver cat before sending it away. She flipped the trapdoor open with a wave of her wand and looked back at the three of them, "stay safe. "

Harry watched Fluffy warily until Hermione had her wand pointed at the harp and focused her magic. Other than Hermione, no one else in their year could possibly sustain a transfiguration that large and complex. He turned to help Ron with the professor-

Harry went cross-eyed with the tip Quirrel's wand hovering a mere inch from his face.

"Stupefy"

* * *

Voldemort hurried along the trail of destruction behind the arrogant McGonagall. The stupid and dumb woman was dismantling all the traps in her way in her haste to catch up with the stealthy Snape. Just like her to bring along three little kids to chase a dangerous wizard after the stone. Not even Voldemort would do that, what the woman thought they could do was beyond him. If it was an actual dark wizard after the stone and not Voldemort weaker than he had ever been.

The first year had put up a surprisingly hard fight for a little girl, he had had to use far more magic than he expected. This body was fading rapidly under his possession, Voldemort really should have let the man go with the unicorn blood to shore up his power but the opportunity of Dumbledore stuck at the ICW was too great to ignore. Plus the unicorn blood would cloud his thinking and dull his senses in exchange for restoring his life and magic.

Still, he had enough magic in him to defeat a transfiguration professor. Whatever traps or obstacles might exist would not be something that required much magic to solve, the crazy old wizard wouldn't want to hurt any of his little charges who wandered down here, right? Even the dog outside would only maul you a little, not that the Cerberus had lived after eating a blasting curse for interrupting.

He caught up to her right as she was disabling the fire zones of Snape's potions room.

"What-" was all the professor got out before a beam of light nearly set her on fire.

Her icy hail into the empty troll room was batted into the wall with a wave of his hand, and then the battle really began.

* * *

A few minutes later, Voldemort spat out a glob of sweat and saliva, cursing his temporary body's weakness. Quirrel wasn't a strong person in the first place and the possession had taken its toll. Voldemort forcing his magic through Quirrel in an extended drawn out battle didn't help.

He glared at the transfiguration professor's statute, with one arm raised and a wide-eyed desperate expression. Zhonya's Defence. McGonagall's last ditch defence turned herself into a time locked statute, something that she couldn't reverse by herself, obviously. Only the very best of transfiguration masters could attempt this and not kill themselves from temporal shear.

Her statute was impervious to all attacks and magic, except for the killing curse. Something that he really couldn't spare the magic for. She would take a day or so to thaw out naturally, more than enough time for Dumbledore to come to her rescue.

In fact, the doddering old fool was probably on his way, McGonagall had already sent her message minutes ago after all.

Voldemort stumbled through the wrecked potions room, an Assyrian ice curse parted Snape's fire wall.

And there, in front of him, lay his prize. The culmination of all his efforts!

The little red stone, small enough to fit into his fist. A seven fold sealing diagram? Pah, was that the best Dumbledore could create?

Voldemort examined the lines, looking for the inevitable weaknesses of this particular sealing technique. It was more suited to internal defence and the trapping of dangerous creatures than to keep others out. Dumbledore might be a genius at magic but not even he could invert the technique perfectly.

And there it was, Voldemort jabbed his wand into a corner while prodding the second edge clockwise with a pair of fingers laced with magic. He hummed a short series of very exact notes and the outermost layer crumbled with not a sound. Six layers left and not much time to do it in.

Breaking through the remaining layers, each more fiendishly designed than the last, was an exercise in tediousness. Voldemort at his height could smash his way through, but now he was reduced to this! His learning journey over the years had given him some cursebreaking knowledge but he shouldn't have to scrabble about on the ground like some common wizard! He was Voldemort and magic should bow to his dominion!

With a snarl, Voldemort snatched up the Stone from the broken warding array. That seal had delayed him for as much as time as it took to defeat McGonagall.

Luckily, Voldemort had planned ahead for his inevitable success by preparing the ingredients for Elixir of Life before attempting the corridor. With a simple plop, the Stone dropped into the vial and an enchanted music box to perform the melody-modified ritual chant for him, a few seconds was all it took for the Elixir to be completed.

"Heh. Hahaha... Muhahahaha!" the Dark Lord cackled as he downed the potion in a single swig. His magic and life surged back, greater than ever before!

The last drop went down his throat right as phoenix fire arrived out of thin air on a clarion call of battle.

* * *

"Energy drain?" Shurelia looked up from the dinner, interrupting Leard from his report on Metafalss politics.

No. There had been a short spike in the Tower's broadcast field, as if someone or something had requested a huge amount of energy before the authentication system kicked it out.

That was troubling, she had expected that the locals would eventually realize the presence of the Tower's energy broadcast field. But not this soon, even the locals who had H-wave abilities shouldn't be able to reverse engineer Sound Science in just two months!

The drain this time was small and undirected though, whatever that was wasn't specifically meant to tap into the Tower, possibly a generic symphonic power collector. Shurelia shook her head, it was impossible to tell without the device in front of her.

Still, perhaps a mission to wherever that was would be good. The embassy effort could pull double duty to assess the locals' progress in Sound Science perhaps?

"Leard, do we have a map of this world?"

* * *

Harry jerked awake at the crashing of stone and the wail of tortured magic. Before he had even thought about the situation, Harry grabbed his fallen wand lying next to him and rolled to his feet.

Quirrel- The train of thought crashed to a halt as what was Fluffy's room exploded around him. Dimly, he stepped in front of Hermione's fallen form -she's burnt, her face and arms- and the chips of flying stone pattered off his school uniform.

Fluffy's room didn't look like Fluffy's room anymore. The giant dog was missing a head and blood was everywhere on the walls. What was left of the walls.

Instead, one entire side of the room -thank goodness it wasn't their side- was just missing, the damage going through the empty classroom and the next wall to open into the empty air over the school's outer grounds. The floor of said classroom and half of Fluffy's room was also gone, exposing a surprisingly undamaged broom closet below.

The calm afternoon sun outside shone down on Professor Quirrel floating in mid-air, surrounding the sneering man with a golden glow. The sneer and the sheer confidence in his posture made Quirrel look like a completely different man. Not to mention his turban was missing and his hair looked to have grown back into a short buzzcut. No, it slowly growing back as Harry watched, getting longer visibly.

In the shadow of the castle in front of Harry and his friends, was Dumbledore. The Headmaster's countenance looked scarier than Harry had ever seen him look before, not even when the twins had exploded an actual toilet like they had threatened their mum with on the platform. The cold anger on the Headmaster's face was totally at odds with his fun and almost foolish behaviour.

Harry realized that his Headmaster might be a bit more complex than he had thought. That he appeared to be a doting grandparent to let the Hogwarts students not be scared of him even when Dumbledore, Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump, was really a very powerful wizard who could do anything he liked to them.

The very alarming circumstances Harry found himself in might be worth screaming just about now but somehow Harry did not feel like screaming. Even if the tension between Dumbledore and Quirrel looked hard enough to grind the castle to dust. Even if Hermione was gravely injured and Professor McGonagall was missing and Harry himself had just woken up and holy shit, Hermione was half burnt and needed to get to hospital wing and safety right now and not in that order.

No, Harry felt as if time was passing very slowly or his thoughts were just racing really fast.

The Headmaster was staring down a very dangerous and cunning dark wizard in the form of Quirrel. The Headmaster did not need little children distracting him or needing to be protected. He remembered how that went in stories and how he was always irritated at the dumb kid who didn't just run away. And Hermione was injured and maybe dying!

"I'll get Hermione and Ron out of here," Harry said softly, getting only a single nod from the Headmaster who didn't take his eyes off the floating former-Professor of Defence.

Leviosa. "I wonder how long you can defend those children? Maybe I'll tear down this castle stone by stone as you exhaust yourself?"

"You have come to the wrong place, Tom. "

"Ah, I knew you would recognize me. No matter, I have already won, for you see, I have the Stone. With it, I have unlimited power!"

No no, ignore the ominous taunting. Dumbledore didn't deign to give a response, only the sensation of risen magic prickling on Harry's skin like a wave of goosebumps. Then Fluffy's door, hanging half off it's hinges, was lit up by flashes of colour and a horrible sparkcrashbang came from behind Harry.

He pushed Ron through the door, taking more care not to bump the floating Hermione against the frame and ignoring how he was straining to even keep her off the ground.

The spellfire behind him crackled higher in intensity when he got through the door, Dumbledore and whoever Tom was unleashing magic that seemed to tear at the fabric of reality. Dumbledore's phoenix sang a battlecry that lifted his spirits despite the exhaustion from keeping Hermione floating.

Behind the door, he saw Snape and Flitwick hurrying down the third floor corridor towards them. The stern potions teacher glanced down at Harry struggling with Hermione and flicked his wand at her once. Immediately the load lightened to a feather. Flitwick tapped the doorway and hooted twice, like an owl, and immediately the sounds of battle faded to a distant roar.

On their tail was Madam Pomfrey and Pomona, the first of whom gasped at Hermione's horrible wounds. The mediwitch immediately motioned for Harry to set her down, which he did gladly, and knelt beside his friend with her wand out. Pomona fretted for a moment before continuing to join the battle.

"I've stabilized her as best as I can," Madam Pomfrey said, wand still moving non-stop. Hermione's burns stopped oozing blood but still remained just as horrible. "She's lucky, there's no curses in the damage, it won't scar much. Take her down to the hospital wing and put her on a bed, do not cover her with a sheet. A seventh year will be with you to administer potions. " Seeing Harry nod back, Pomfrey stood up and sent of the same glowing white messenger Harry saw McGonagall use and hurried through the doorway to help any of the teachers who might get injured.

Harry stood up, marshalled his magic and levitated Hermione again. He might be exhausted but Hermione depended on him now. Never mind his unearned legend as the Boy-Who-Lived, if he couldn't even lift her to the hospital wing when she was a feather's weight then he wasn't worthy of the name Harry Potter.

* * *

Dumbledore shouted a carefully pronounced word and a jet of water flew out of his wand, transforming into a hail of metal needles on its way towards Riddle. The phoenix hovering near his shoulder started its battlesong. Almost instinctively, Dumbledore fell into the rhythm of that wordless crying and whistles.

Forwards and left twice, duck under a killing curse, transform the blast of fire into a swarm of exploding snitches. Charm the snitches to follow the target. Shield against bonebreaker, step right and back to dodge another killing curse. Wand up, retransfigure blocked metal needles into a cloud of acid fog.

It was almost like a dance, something he had forgotten since the time he had dueled Grindelwald with a phoenix on his shoulder. Riddle had never stood around to fight like this, always plotting and striking from the shadows, always fearful of a decisive battle he might lose. Clearly the boost given by Elixir of Life was making the dark lord overconfident.

Without looking, Dumbledore felt two familiar presences step up behind him. Snape and Flitwick. Charms and curses flew from them thick and fast as Dumbledore stepped back into a more defensive role without needing to discuss strategy.

Transfigure rock to intercept killing curse at Flitwick. Glance at Snape, send "you will not return to him" with Legilimency, immediately Snape's curses become darker and lethal. Homing bonebreaker into blood-to-acid into shadow shield.

The barrage of magic sent at Tom was putting him on the backfoot but revitalized by the Elixir, they had less stamina than he. Dumbledore felt Pomona join the battle and took a risk. Glancing at Snape again to tell him the plan, Dumbledore swiped aside a curse meant for the Herbology teacher before disappearing into a blaze of phoenix fire, the only teleportation that worked in Hogwarts.

Fawkes' battlesong remained uninterrupted through the fire step, even as Dumbledore materialized behind Tom and catching the dark lord in a lethal crossfire that made his defence precarious. The dark lord still managed to catch Snape with a bouncing sunfire curse that Dumbledore wasn't around to intercept. The potions master rolled to the ground and batted the flames down with his wand but his off-hand was charred and burnt.

Still, caught between Dumbledore's transfiguration, Snape's offensive barrage and Flitwicks more subtle but no less deadly assortment of charms, with Pomona and now Pomfrey to play defence and exploit opportunities, a lone Voldemort might have all the magical power but he simply couldn't cast fast enough to counter everything that was being thrown at him.

Just before Dumbledore could finish turning a spray of burning smoke into a magic resistant silver cage for Flitwick to animate while Snape began a sequence of hard to counter curses, the dark lord had sensed his impending doom and cast his wand down. The flight spell cut out, dropping the wizard below Snape's barrage, and a blossom of blood-red flame appeared below the dark lord.

There was a distinctive discordant shriek as the universe protested the birth of the Fiendfyre. Immediately, the droplet expanded, feeding on the fertile magical soil of the Hogwarts grounds, birthing a deadly python made of raw negativity. Fawkes shrieked its anger at the snake, the two magical songs clashing in a horrible disharmony. But disharmony only fed the chaotic destruction that was Fiendfyre.

Not that Voldemort was getting away with that however, the dark lord had to dodge his own Fiendfyre as it began to run out of control almost immediately. As Dumbledore immediately worked to corral it, feeling Flitwick singing a goblin tune on the opposite side, Voldemort zoomed up and away into the sky.

The dark lord had successfully gambled that Dumbledore would work to save his school and the children there over capturing Voldemort.

So be it.

The headmaster sighed as the last of the flaming python disappeared back into nothingness, leaving a circle of fused glass on the lawn. Now that the phoenix battlesong had faded, he was starting to second guess his decision to place the trap in the school. Had he spread himself too thin with too many offices? But everyone had wanted him to take the posts. And now the Tower had arrived, making his schedule so stretched that a gap in the response time to the trap had appeared, and Voldemort had exploited it.

"Was that wise?"

He looked up to find Snape standing close, a question in his eyes despite the hint of pain from the cursed burns. Snape going serious on the dark lord would jeopardize his position. But that was infeasible anyway. "Voldemort has the stone. With it, he will be more aggressive and less accepting of subterfuge. It would have been too dangerous for you to return, he would have asked you to do things I could not allow you to do. " And now too dangerous to leave the castle.

Dumbledore could see Snape understood the effective jail sentence. "I sense you're happy about that," Dumbledore asked, "will you not grow bored in captivity?"

"Compared to the excitement of being a spy in the dark lord's inner circle, I'll take boredom and being annoyed at children every time. "

"Even the annoyance of the son of a certain woman?"

"Even him. "

Dumbledore chuckled hollowly and returned to look at the glass circle. The offer of a lemon drop to Snape was refused as always. In a moment, he would recall the Order and the war would begin anew.

But for now, he just wanted to remember his faults and mistakes.


	11. Chapter 11 - HP

"I am sorry. "

"Your apology is accepted, I understand that your duties were far too many. Your efforts to protect it was the best you could do under the circumstances. "

"... what will you do?"

 _*sigh*_ "It seems that I cannot retire to my next great adventure just yet. Another shall be made. "

"I understand. I will make arrangements. "

"Do see to it. And don't look so regretful. After all, it seems that the world still holds some excitement for me. The Tower is so very interesting. "

* * *

Voldemort stalked into the hall of Malfoy Manor, acknowledging the bows of his hastily reassembled Death Eaters. Once he had performed the ritual for his own resurrection, substituting the majority of ingredients with a simple dash of Elixir, Quirrel had gained the not-so-enviable place of 'Most Favoured Death Eater'.

The man was still unconscious from Voldemort's stint in his body and quite unable to appreciate the Dark Lord's consideration.

Returned in his own body, young and vigorous as if he was still Tom Riddle right out of his NEWTs, Voldemort could sense the shock from the free Death Eaters. After all, their Dark Lord now looked and felt younger than they did.

"Welcome back, my lord," they bowed together.

"Isn't it interesting," he drawled, savouring the fearful trembling of these powerful men at the sound of his voice, "how many years has it been since I was forced to leave? How many years did I have to spend wandering around as nothing more than a spirit? But no one came. "

Silence greeted him. Only to be expected. There was so much fun in asking questions that had no right answers.

"Did you not believe that I had plans? That Voldemort had gone further into the realm of immortality than any before?" the Dark Lord's voice was still calm and silky, but no less dangerous.

Ah, how he loved this feeling of power, but his forces were meager and despite the advantage of the stone, Voldemort still needed them. His battle with the old wizard had shown that for all his newfound might, he was still limited in speed.

"I have obtained the philosopher's stone," Voldemort announced, smirking as the assembled faces lit up with greed, "indeed, despite the setbacks, we are closer to victory and our eternal reward than ever before. "

He needed to cement these rabble to him, to position them irrevocably to Voldemort. More than any advantage of secrecy, Voldemort needed to both show them the rewards of service and seal any possibility of retreat. Beyond the loyalty the marks bought him, he needed to burn their bridges so that no such delay in helping their Lord would happen again.

"Yes, you have noticed the reason for my newfound youth. And no doubt you want the benefits too. But how to redeem yourself when there has been such failure for ten years?"

The concealed hope was both easy to spot and easy to manipulate.

"In three days, my return will be announced. All of you here will join in the attack with me, without your masks. Those who act and those who do not... will be rewarded appropriately. " Those who participated would be given Elixir, more to return their power to their youth than anything else. Those who did not would get their just reward.

"My.. My lord," the fearful voice bowed, "if I go without my mask, I fear that my political uses will be severely affected. And our safety here cannot be guaranteed. "

"Do you think me unable to keep you safe?" The Dark Lord grinned at the perfect hook for yet another question with no answer. "Oh very well then. You shall serve in a different way. Show me how useful your politics are, only then you shall receive. After all, if you so wish to keep your station, it would not do for others to ask awkward questions about your age, no?"

The man bowed and scraped, muttering his thanks. Simpering fool.

Voldemort scanned the room again. No one else brought up any objections.

"Remember, three days. Go. "

* * *

Petunia was in a bit of a bind. An awkward position, so to speak.

She was trying very hard not to feel grateful, that she had taken in her nephew, for the first time in ten years.

Ever since Petunia had taken in the child from that huge giant of a man, and received with veiled threats to treat him well, she had put up, fed and clothed the boy. She wouldn't, couldn't, love the child, not when it was the spawn of her sister that was the utter embarrassment of the family, running off with that pompous git. But the boy had grown up over the years, not starved and not beaten too badly, and Petunia's fears that the scary people would make trouble had gone unwarranted.

Until two masked black robed men had got themselves struck by lightning on her very doorstep.

After all, the two of those people had turned up suddenly, all dolled up with black cloaks and masks, looking as if they wanted to burn her house down. They had waved their sticks and milled around outside for a few minutes. Then they took one step into her garden and lightning had struck them down. From clear blue sky, no less.

It had left a scorched circle on her grass that was going to be the talk of the street for years. Before the police had turned up and claimed the smoking bodies, all the neighbours had gotten a good look at them and had promptly decided God himself had smote what was clearly devil worshippers.

The boy had to go. Even if his presence was needed to protect her house, her house wouldn't be in danger if the boy wasn't around. The boy's watcher, the batty cat lady, could carry her letter.

Yes, Petunia had decided. They would not accept the boy back over summer.

* * *

Cornelius frowned as he looked at the single sheet of paper. Why couldn't the world just make sense any more?

The Tower was full of wizards that didn't have a Statue of Secrecy. How could that even be possible? Living without a Statute of Secrecy? Inconceivable!

And now the Muggle prime minister had sent him a message through one of the private Ministry letter boxes, one damned message that could sink his entire political career. This was the Fiendfyre that would burn down everything Cornelius had gained!

* * *

 **To the Office of the Minister for Magic,**

The prime minister informs you that we have granted the Ar Cielan governments Platina, Metafalica, Nemo and Tenba, a joint embassy and point of contact within the boundaries of the United Kingdom.

As we have cause to believe that their technology may result in false alarms of magic use, please be aware that the Cielan delegation will armed and our government will not be responsible for any conflicts or casualties arising between you.

The Ar Cielans have expressed interested in opening dialogue between your government and theirs. If you wish to establish a channel of communication to them, we will be happy to assist.

Written correspondence to the Cielan governments can be directed to 10 Downing Street or delivered in the method you favour.

 **The Prime Minister's Office**

 **Her Majesty's Government**

* * *

There was a knock on his door and the old wizard walked in. The man of the hour!

"Dumbledore! Come, come, take a seat!" Fudge gestured at the chair across the Minister's desk. The Chief Warlock settled himself in gratefully. "It's terrible! The Tower is sending an embassy to the muggles! The Statute won't survive this!"

The old wizard simply looked at him. It was irritating how Dumbledore always managed to make Fudge feel as if he was still learning transfiguration under the man.

"Unfortunately this is not the only bad news," the old man said gravely. Fudge trembled. Something that Dumbledore considered bad news? Had the ICW decision gone against them?

"Voldemort has returned," the wizard said.

Fudge stared at him. His quill fell to the floor unnoticed. Before the instinctive denial could leave his mouth, there was a hurried knock on the office door again.

"Wha-what is it now?" Fudge stammered, somewhat glad for the distraction.

Without even waiting for the occupants to open the door, an auror stumbled through, arms waving, "Minister! The- The muggles! In Diagon Alley!"

And today had started off so well too.

* * *

Lyner prepared to draw his blade for a shield, himself a shield to the civilians behind him. At the other end of the open brick wall was a row of the magic using people pointing wands at the delegation. He had to stop getting into these situations. How did this happen?

Oh that's right, he decided to walk into a bar. Why was it that trouble always happened in bars? Lyner had merely asked for the entrance and a guide to their Ministry of Magic. When the bartender, a wizard by the name of Tom, had opened up the wall, there was the wand wielding people waiting for him and not looking friendly.

Unknown to Lyner was that while most of the patrons of the bar in the afternoon had only regarded the party with some alarm but not hostility, one of the patrons had started drinking a little early. The man had panicked and flooed to the Auror reporting station, screaming that the muggles were cooperating with the Tower to invade magical Britain.

"Gentlemen and ladies," said one of the severely dressed wizards in front of Lyner, stepping forwards, "lay down your arms and deactivate any magic on you or we will be forced to take action. "

Which was something Lyner was not going to do. Being greeted this way did not bode well for future relations but if this person was high ranking enough to call for such action so quickly, he was also high ranking enough to get into contact with the government.

"I am Lyner Barsett, current Representative of the Tower of Ar Tonelico. May I know who I am speaking to?" Lyner said carefully. Krushe's thumbs up beside him told Lyner he had not messed up his english.

"John Dawlish, Auror Office. I must insist that you disarm yourself. You are in violation of the Statute of Secrecy. " The man frowned when none of Lyner's party moved.

"We are not familiar with your laws, but we haven't had the chance to do anything or know any secrets," Lyner replied, "actually, I am here to formally establish contact between our respective governments. Perhaps you could convey a message to your Ministry in order to arrange a meeting date?"

The auror simply looked even more impatient, "your knowledge of magic is the secret, and your ability to find and enter the Leaky Cauldron is an even larger one. Disarm yourself now and submit to questioning. "

Lyner kept a frown off his face but his blank stare at the man was only making the tension ratchet higher every second. He didn't want to fight the magical law enforcement, he wanted to talk to them! But talking required both sides to actually cooperate, Lyner could not do anything if the British magic users adamantly did not want to talk.

Lyner's combat instincts flared when one of the men shifted, about to launch a ranged attack Lyner thought, when there was a loud crack behind the men that made them all jump.

A very tall hat heralded an ancient garishly dressed man pushing his way through the wall of robed magic users. Lyner suppressed a wince at the man's animated pink drawings on his green clothing, noting that the old man was followed by a much shorter and slightly plump man dressed in an electric blue jacket. What was with this disastrous fashion sense?

"Put down your wands, there will be no fighting here at the entrance to the magical world," the old man said, waving a hand at the assembled magic users. Reassuringly, John Dawlish appeared to be overruled by this old man, reluctantly lowering his wand.

"I am Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of Magical Britain," the old man introduced himself. The man's eyes moved over Lyner's party but did not seem immediately hostile. Somehow, Lyner's combat instincts told him that this man was more dangerous than the rest of the magic users present combined. This Dumbledore held himself too confidently despite his age.

"Lyner Barsett, current Representative of the Tower of Ar Tonelico. " Chief Warlock sounded important, perhaps he was in their government?

Mr Dumbledore turned to the shorter man accompanying him, who was looking constipated. "It appears our hands are forced, contact is inevitable. Do not let the first meeting between our peoples be that of violence. "

"Yes-yes," the shorter man stammered, "Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic. I... I hope we can discuss some important issues regarding the Statute-"

It was at this point that Lyner's sense for imminent crisis began to tingle. True enough, Dumbledore's head snapped up with a frown.

"Anti-apparition wards," the old man muttered.

* * *

 _A/N: Why yes, I did think leaving baby!Harry alone in a basket with only a letter was dumb. Though sending Hagrid with a letter isn't much better..._

 _Also, having Dumbledore and Flamel meet in an "ominous council of vagueness" scene amuses me._

 _Flamel is good at Alchemy and the related Potions, Runes and Arithmancy fields. Power wise, he's nowhere close to Dumbledore, mostly due to age. Without leveraging magical tricks from his alchemy, cannot fight Voldemort and expect to win._


End file.
